


Am I Too Far?

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Background Relationships, Clueless Boys, Emotions, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, M/M, Mild Language, Motorcycles, Slow Build, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-13 16:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14752686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: Minghao never had a thing for guys with motorcycles until he had a thing for a guy with a motorcycle. It's not as simple as it sounds.Or maybe it's simpler.





	Am I Too Far?

**Author's Note:**

> first order of business. i DID NOT get this idea from ccc mv (can you imagine? me writing 26k in like under 2 weeks? LOL) but i must say that mv's theme absolutely sent me over the rails. this au has been sitting in my head for months. so you can just guess how i am feeling right about now

Junior year of college should be a good one, exciting, intense. You’re no longer a naïve and fresh-faced underclassman, but not quite into the existential career fair dread of the rising senior. Half of your college career is left—the harder half, maybe, but also the better half, the half with all the classes you’re really interested in, the half that tells you whether that passion you decided to go into crippling debt over was the right pick. By all counts, junior year should be the best one. Though they’re only a week into the school year, Minghao isn’t quite finding it so.

It’s his fault, he guesses, for postponing a gen ed he knows all his friends have already taken, but he doesn’t blame himself. Nobody really wants to take economics even though almost everyone has to. It’s not really that it’s a difficult class, not quite that it’s uninteresting. The biggest problem is that it’s one of those huge lecture classes with two hundred students on the roster and a hundred more on the waiting list, stadium seating and those tiny armrest desks barely big enough to fit a birthday card. The problem is the crowd.

Minghao has gotten used to his major photography classes, smaller and more focused, places the professor actually knows who he is and his classmates are few enough to count without getting dizzy. He’s not opposed to bigger classes—something about the anonymity can be nice, when the lecturer couldn’t pick him out of a group of other students—but he doesn’t like the thought of having to arrive early enough to keep his seat every day instead of having it left alone for him, nor is he fond of seeing a new face beside him every time class meets. So far, they’ve had three classes, and each time has seen new seat neighbors, none of whom he can quite recall. He misses the consistency.

The hallway outside the lecture room is quiet while he waits, buzzing with antsy energy as the clock creeps toward the end of the period. Minghao stands at the side of the hall with a handful of other students who don’t have class in the previous block, watching the doors for the current class to shuffle out and make way for them. Of the hall group, Minghao is the only one to hang back and wait until the classroom is almost totally empty to make his entrance, which is how he figures most of them are freshmen. Very lucky of them to have an afternoon class like this; all his lecture classes his freshman year had been early morning torture.

He sits in the middle back section so he won’t seem like he cares too much, closer to the end of the row so he can get out faster. As he waits for the seats around him to fill, he plays a game on his phone, a simple one where every touch changes the avatar’s direction as it follows a path. He’s not as good at it as he should be considering how easy it is, but it passes the time. Touch. Left turn. Touch. Right turn. And left again. And right again. Coming up is a sequence of several turns in a row, and those always mess him up the most because he freaks out and taps the screen a time too many, but this time, he’s feeling good. One, two, three, fo—

“Pardon me,” comes a soft grunt from above. The owner of the voice knocks Minghao’s phone with his knee at the same time, bumping it out of his hand and straight to the floor below with a hushed clack. Before Minghao can think about grabbing it, the guy is sliding into the seat beside him and reaching for it himself. “Sorry,” he says, and just before he gives the phone back, he takes a glance at the screen and flashes a bright smile. “For knocking your phone down, and also for being nosy. What game are you playing?”

This guy is not one of Minghao’s previous seat neighbors; he can tell immediately because his face is too memorable. Sharp cheekbones, warm grin, eyes that twinkle in all the right places. He’s pretty. Minghao is careful plucking his phone, careful to avoid brushing fingertips. This is a face that makes you fall in love if you aren’t careful, in the same way that eating food in the underworld traps you there.

“It’s called Moon Collector,” he says, turning the screen slightly and starting over. Six points from beating his personal record. It’s hard to bite down that bitterness. “You tap the screen at the bends in the path so the little guy will turn, and you pick up these tiny little moons on the path.”

“Sounds fun,” the guy hums as Minghao waddles right off the edge and loses after collecting just three moons.

“It’s not,” Minghao huffs, turning the screen back to his eyes only and starting over again. “It sucks and I hate it.” The laughter that comes from his left is dry and lazy, and it throws Minghao off almost enough to make him lose again. Almost.

“Good luck with it anyway,” he says. Minghao is about to say thanks, but another set of three students weasels past him to get to the center seats, and the second one jostles him to a loss, and then the two of them are acting like they don’t know each other again. Technically, they don’t. And they probably won’t. Thirty rows in front, the professor announces that it’s time to begin, and Minghao tucks his phone away to pay attention through the masses still shuffling into seats.

“Afternoon, all,” she says. “Everybody take out your clickers. We’re having our first quiz today.”

A nice, hearty groan resounds from nearly every set of lips in the room, and while Minghao doesn’t join them in volume, he feels them in spirit. On the fourth meeting of class, what is there to take a quiz over? The first day was devoted entirely to the syllabus, and every class after that has been stalled by the overeager bunch in the front row asking six questions every other slide. Minghao doesn’t even remember what they’re alleged to have talked about. All he remembers is the nasally voice of the guy in the second row asking something about the online homework that isn’t due for two more weeks.

Of course, she gives the quiz anyway, then launches straight into the regular lecture without bothering to reveal the correct answers for the students who care. There’s a meme on the fourth slide, and that’s when Minghao zones out, notes on his page turning from letters into loopy doodles in the margins. He watches the tip of his pencil as it traces absently, careful not to overlap the line he’s already begun and make it ugly, careful not to leave too much space empty. He’s building a tiny graphite labyrinth to the dull background music of an explanation of scarcity.

Construction halts when he hears the professor say, “Since this is a discussion-oriented course, I want you to take a few moments to talk with the people around you about what you think of this question.”

Minghao sighs and looks up at the question on the slide. He was hoping she wouldn’t be one of those teachers who thinks discussion is the right thing for a two hundred student lecture, but every class so far, she’s been proving him wrong. Partially as a form of protest and partially because he’s been too focused on covering his paper with lines to understand the question, he decides to skip out on the discussion and go right back to doodling. A soft cough comes from beside him.

“What, so you don’t wanna talk to me?”

It’s the guy who knocked his phone down. Obviously it’s him, since neither of them have moved. He’s looking Minghao’s way with a keen grin, occasionally glancing at the scribbles decorating Minghao’s notebook, back to Minghao’s eyes. He looks very desperate for a chat.

“Not really, no.”

“Wow,” the guy drawls, still smiling. “Is it because I made you lose at your game? I said sorry.”

“I just don’t think we should have to talk to each other in a class this big,” Minghao tells him, readjusting in his seat. “I just want to show up and then go home.”

“Come on, that’s no attitude to have,” the guy chides. He sticks his hand Minghao’s direction, fingers wiggling. “I’m Jeonghan, by the way.”

“Minghao.” Jeonghan’s grip is firmer than it seems like it’s going to be, hands slightly more calloused than Minghao expects. He holds on like he’s afraid of losing something.

“What year are you, Minghao? Junior?” His lips curl with pride when Minghao opens his mouth to answer. “Look at your face! Am I right on the money?”

“Yeah,” Minghao answers, drawing his hand back only after he realizes he’s been holding onto Jeonghan’s for too long. His knuckles still ring with phantom pressure. “Are you a junior too, then?”

“God, I wish,” Jeonghan says, eyes moony. He turns in his seat to face the front of the classroom again, elbow bumping against Minghao’s on the arm rest. “I’d love to be that young again.” He holds up his hand again, just to show it off this time. His fingers are all just a little crooked, thumb curved, palm smooth. “I’m a fifth year. Doing a victory lap.” Minghao snorts.

“Is it really a victory lap if you haven’t won yet?” he asks, and Jeonghan’s expression sours, though his eyes still glitter past the wrinkle of his nose.

“Shouldn’t you be nicer to people you just met?” he scolds, shifting his weight again, making his forearm press fully against Minghao’s. The knuckles of their pinkies touch just barely, and it makes Minghao feel stuck. “Respect your elders. I’m just taking my time.”

“Yeah, sure,” Minghao hums, and Jeonghan opens his mouth to say something else, but their professor demands attention be returned to her, so he seals his lips and draws his arm back from their shared rest. She talks straight for the rest of the class time block, as professors often do, and when she’s clicked through to the smiley face at the end of the presentation, Jeonghan is already up on his feet, sliding past Minghao and up the stairs to the exit at the back of the hall. For a moment, Minghao watches him go. He misses the consistency.

 

Class meets again two days later, because that’s what Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes do. Minghao is early again because he’s got a break all three days, standing in the hall and waiting for the floodgates to crack. The nice thing about being early is that he’ll always get the seat he’s after, right beside a seat with a hole in the cushion. He feels his classmates coming in more than he sees them, a quiet accumulation of pressure everywhere around his eyes but never in front of them, a slowly rising tide in his periphery. Somebody new slides into the seat beside him, this time without knocking his phone out of his hand, but that might only be because he isn’t holding it. He hangs onto a breath like he’s waiting for something, and it’s not that he doesn’t know what it is, he just doesn’t want to be waiting for it.

A voice drifts by only minutes before class is going to start, and it’s one Minghao recognizes, but it isn’t aimed at him. “Sorry,” it says, not really sounding sorry, “but my friend here,” and Minghao feels a hand on his shoulder, light but very warm, “was saving me that seat, and he forgot to make sure nobody sat in it.” In what way is that saving the seat, when the only requirement is to ensure nobody sits in it? Minghao looks up just as Jeonghan is flashing a smile. “Could you maybe scoot down one?”

“Uh, sure.” The girl he’s talking to doesn’t look like she wants to, but Jeonghan gives off the vibe of someone who would make a scene; in a way, he’s already making one. She moves anyway, and Jeonghan hums a little when he slips into the newly vacated seat.

“Why didn’t you save the seat for me?” he asks, voice low.

“Was I supposed to know that you wanted me to?”

“I thought we bonded.” He leans in too far on their shared armrest, too close, and Minghao can smell his cologne. It’s subtle but also overpowering, and Minghao feels a little lightheaded. “I thought you would know to save it.”

“We bonded? Is that why you sprinted out the second class was over?”

“What, so I’m not allowed to go to my next class?” A slow grin spreads across his face, like a pad of butter melting into a pancake. “But since you even care, that means we definitely _did_ bond,” he continues, “which means you should have saved my seat.”

Minghao sighs. He could say something about how he figured Jeonghan wouldn’t care about something like sitting by him again anyway in a class so huge, but there’s not much point in bringing it up. It’ll only call into question that little tendency he has of overthinking small thinks like who’s sitting next to him in a giant lecture and how much he cares about it. “Fine,” he says, “I should have saved it.”

“So you’ll save it next time,” Jeonghan tells him. It is neither a question nor a suggestion, just a statement. A faithful assertion. Like Jeonghan’s checked all the local crystal balls and every last timeline has Minghao saving that seat for him. He guesses he will since he’s being guilted into it now, but thinking about it makes his chest feel a little cramped. Jeonghan leaning into his side also makes him feel a little cramped.

“Sure,” Minghao says, and Jeonghan leans away just in time for their professor to commence the lecture.

It’s boring. Of course it is. There is only so much you can do to spice up the regulation of scarce resources, and this woman is not doing any of it. The occasional irrelevant and ill-formatted meme in the slides is her only attempt, and that certainly isn’t enough to hold Minghao’s attention. Six slides in, he’s checked all the way out, lines of letters on his notebook page morphing into meaningless bunches of nonsense loops. It’s a wonder he even tries to take notes anymore when it turns into empty doodling so often, but old habits die hard, and there’s something comfortable about holding a pencil to a notebook during class time.

While he spaces out, he notices Jeonghan beside him. Specifically, his hand, the pencil it holds, and the way he taps it endlessly on his small imitation desk. The meter of the tapping is just uneven enough to be frustrating while not quite obnoxious enough for him to mention it, but it does sit in his ears heavier than anything their professor has said so far. Eventually, it becomes nothing, the neutral sound of the earth’s heart beating, the background noise of the atmosphere sticking to the planet. When it finally stops, it sounds like a jet engine launching, deafening and everywhere. Minghao looks up to Jeonghan’s newly stilled hand first, then toward the front of the room. His own hand comes to a standstill when he sees class is over.

“That was fast,” he mutters, and Jeonghan turns to him with raised eyebrows.

“You think?” he says. “Felt like years to me.”

He sits still in his seat as Minghao packs up, tapping now with his fingernails on his empty desk. The sound is almost the same, but so unfathomably different. It’s fuller in a way Minghao doesn’t think he’ll ever understand, rings on the air longer, follows a new beat through his ears. It’s hollow and not, quiet and crashing, and it keeps up until Minghao has zipped his bag closed again and heaved it from the floor. Jeonghan stands along with him when he rises.

“I though you had a class to get to,” Minghao says.

“Not on Fridays, I don’t.” He beams. “You headed anywhere?”

“Just home. This is my last class.”

“Which way are you walking now?”

“Toward the library.” Slowly, they make their way up the stairs and to the back exit, meander through the short length of hallway before breaking into the outside. The sun is relentless again today, pressing its sweaty palms everywhere on Minghao’s body they can reach. “I’m parked in lot 19.” Now that he thinks about it, he’s also got a few photos he needs to develop in the dark room, an early-onset project for an old school professor. The arts building is right next to lot 19—maybe he’ll swing by before he leaves.

“Wow, what a coincidence. I’m heading toward the library too.” Jeonghan’s sigh is dreamy, and the tree they pass under casts a long shadow across his face that makes him look a little lonely. “We have so much in common.” When Minghao only hums, Jeonghan nudges his side with an elbow. “Come on, talk a little more. We’re bonding.”

“I thought we already bonded.”

“You think bonding only happens once?” Jeonghan howls, and a passing frat guy looks at them, eyebrows drawn together in concerned confusion—or maybe it’s confused concern. “So your mother birthed you, and then you just thought, ‘Oh, that’s enough. We know each other plenty by now,’ huh?”

There is a beat of silence, and then Minghao laughs. He laughs before he thinks it’s funny, less at what Jeonghan said and more at the fact he said it. How it was the first thought his brain took him to. The longer Minghao laughs, the more he doesn’t even think it was funny, but his volume is increasing with every step, and Jeonghan is just watching him with quiet pride. Maybe this is also bonding, in a way. Eventually, Minghao’s laughter fades into the sound of wind sneaking between the campus trees. Jeonghan opens his mouth, but before he can say whatever he’s got planned, another voice cuts straight through to them.

“I knew I recognized that laugh,” it says, and Minghao turns to see a familiar figure jogging over to them.

His friend Soonyoung, one of his current roommates along with another friend named Junhui, who Minghao was on the track team with in high school. He met Soonyoung through Junhui’s insistence on Minghao’s attending anime club meetings throughout his freshman year, since Minghao was too shy to talk to people and too lonely to say no, and he’s nice enough. He’s changed his major at least three times since Minghao met him. Probably gearing up for his own victory lap or six.

“Hey,” Minghao says. Sweat gleams on Soonyoung’s face, so he’s either been running to catch up for a while, or he ate hot Cheetos pretty recently. A drop falls from his chin to the neck of his shirt in slow motion. “Just get out of class?”

“Yeah, I just had intro to architecture.” He could say any class and Minghao would believe it. Soonyoung, realizing now that he’s approached a duo instead of a solo, looks toward Jeonghan and smiles a little bigger, raises his eyebrows. “Whoa, hey! How are you doing?”

“You guys know each other?” Minghao asks.

“Sure,” Soonyoung whistles. “Jeonghan was in my geology classes when I was a sophomore.” He blinks a few times. “Wait, how do you two know each other?”

“Economics,” they answer at the same time. Soonyoung’s jaw hangs open a little. While Jeonghan smiles with gentle glee, Minghao’s cheeks color, and he thinks about the sun. About how much closer it would have to get to burn him to a crispy death. It could be as little as an inch, he guesses. The universe is so delicately balanced like that. What an unforgiving inch.

“We’ve been bonding,” Jeonghan observes aloud, not quite to Soonyoung and not quite to nobody, smile lifting him from the chin. Soonyoung’s face melts back into an easy grin, eyes crinkling.

“Good! Minghao’s shy, so I worry about him.” He laughs while he dodges Minghao’s first and second punches, then grunts when he’s nailed by the third. “Good to hear you’re also putting off your gen eds.”

“Somebody’s gotta do it,” Jeonghan says, weary, like it’s been such a tough job and he just needs a nap. Soonyoung only nods, and Minghao wonders whether either of them realize nobody has to do it and whether that’s even worth mentioning. Probably not.

In front of them, the library rises slowly, from a distant façade of a library to a real three-dimensional building bustling with students. Lot 19 is to the left of the library and a little farther down, and when Minghao starts making a beeline toward it, Jeonghan doesn’t follow him. Instead, he keeps heading toward the library, aiming dead for the entrance. He raises one arm in weak salute as he departs, eyes closed in a grin.

“See you around!” he calls.

“Good seeing you!” Soonyoung calls back. Minghao considers whether it’s worth it to give his own farewell greeting, but Jeonghan is basically going through the doors by now, so he holds his tongue. Beside him, Soonyoung hums. “Man. Small world. I haven’t seen him since last semester.”

“Well, this semester just started, like, last week.”

“I guess you’re right.” Soonyoung eyes Minghao in his periphery, eyebrows raised, curious. “So, how did you even meet him? Econ is always such a big class. And it’s not like you’re Chatty Cathy or anything.”

“He just sat next to me,” Minghao says with a shrug.

“Since when do you get all chummy with the people who sit next to you?”

“Since never, dad.” Soonyoung snorts. “He asked me a question about Moon Collector, and then today he sat next to me again, so I guess we’re friends.”

“What is with your weird weak spot for that game?” Soonyoung groans. He gestures at a pair of birds sitting in a tree they pass under as if they’ll know, but all they do is fly off, ashamed by their lack of answer. “Every time someone says anything to you about it, you trust them, like, immediately.”

“That… is _not_ true.”

“Wonwoo asked you about it at the movie theater, and you liked him right off the bat.” He extends a hand of five fingers and ticks one down. “Jihoon said something about it when you were playing it at the New Year’s party, and you instantly liked him way more than you ever liked Junhui.” He ticks another finger down. Minghao waits for example number three, but Soonyoung stays quiet for too long, and he knows there isn’t one.

“Two instances does not make a pattern.”

“But three does,” Soonyoung says, “which is something I learned in math class once. And Jeonghan is number three.” He wiggles the next finger in the sequence, up close to Minghao’s face. “He’s your pattern.”

Above them, the sky drips light blue from between patches of clouds, and they start to look like something just moments before Minghao decides to stop looking at them. Soonyoung quietly uncurls his two example fingers and runs a hand through his hair, still damp with the sweat that’s been drying on their walk. It’s a beautiful day out, but much too hot for Minghao’s tastes. His shirt is sticking to him all over.

“I don’t suppose you’re also parked in lot 19,” he muses after another minute’s silent walking. Soonyoung turns to him from the squirrel he was watching and flashes a beam.

“Funny you should mention that. I was actually wondering if I could get a ride home.” Minghao sighs. “I don’t want to take the shuttle again.”

“I should’ve known.” He digs his keys out of his pocket and hits unlock. “You better not get my passenger seat all sweaty.” A pair of taillights flash at the edge of the lot, and Soonyoung breaks into a sprint toward them. Looks like Minghao will have to develop those photos some other time.

“You’re a wonderful man, Hao,” he calls as he runs. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!”

 

True to his words, Jeonghan continues to sit by Minghao in their economics lectures. Though Minghao’s sure he doesn’t mean to be, he’s a very distracting person to sit beside, and it’s more than just the way he taps his pencil arrhythmically on the desk. Even when he’s doing nothing, he edges past the corner of Minghao’s attention he’s been allotted to occupy. It’s something about the air he gives off, how it seems like he’ll always be doing something, and Minghao is so prone to curiosity. He can’t help but check. Often.

“Am I bugging you or something?” Jeonghan whispers after the fourth or fifth glance Minghao takes in his direction. And here he thought he was being discreet.

“No.”

“Why do you keep looking over here, then?” He leans a little closer so he can lower his voice a little more. “Is it my new cologne? Does it actually smell like shit?”

Not even close. Minghao couldn’t even smell it before, but now that Jeonghan is right up to him, it’s coming through strong. It’s a nice scent, full and relaxing, like polished wood or already-burnt candles, and now it’s the only thing he can smell. Leaning in was such a cruel thing to do considering Jeonghan was under the impression it smelled bad, would have been so cruel if his suspicions were right. In a way, it’s still a little cruel.

“It smells fine,” Minghao understates.

“Really?”

“Yes. Would you get out of my space?”

“Oh, sorry.” He doesn’t quite sound it, but he does back up, which Minghao figures is good enough. The scent of cologne still hangs on the air, reluctant to melt away after being noticed. “What is it, then?” For a moment, Minghao just looks at him and tries to think of a way to say it that makes sense. Then he exhales.

“I just have this feeling that you’ll be doing something, so I feel like I need to check.”

“Doing something… like what?” Jeonghan watches the ceiling in thought, tracing out clouds through the barrier of the roof. “Flossing?”

“Not exactly what I was thinking, but now that you mention it specifically, yes.” Jeonghan raises his eyebrows, lips a tiny smile, and Minghao only shrugs. “I don’t know. I just have this gut feeling you’re always up to something over there.” Jeonghan hums in return, hushed and short.

“I don’t know if I should take that as a good thing or a bad thing.”

“Me neither,” Minghao confesses, and Jeonghan chuckles. The slight shaking of his chest transfers through his elbow to Minghao’s arm to Minghao’s chest, and he pretends not to feel like laughing along.

It’s Friday again, so after class, Jeonghan hangs back to chat with Minghao while he packs his things up. Jeonghan never has any of his own packing up to do, mostly owing to how he never takes anything out at the beginning of class in the first place aside from his pencil (usually) and his clicker (rarely). While he watches Minghao draw his zipper closed, he makes a small noise of dawning and slaps a hand over Minghao’s shoulder.

“Say, Hao,” he says. Minghao doesn’t particularly like that nickname, but he’s too lazy to say so. “You were talking about how you had a feeling I’d be flossing earlier, right?” Not exactly right, no. But right enough.

“Yeah?” Something about the phrasing is already making him inexplicably nervous, something about the way the tie-in is shaping up. He hopes Jeonghan won’t ask whatever it seems like he’s going to ask, though even Minghao hasn’t got the next question quite figured out yet. All he knows is he doesn’t want to answer it.

“Yeah. So, speaking of feeling things.” That also doesn’t sound very comforting, and his heartbeat is spiking before he realizes it was picking up speed. “We have our first exam coming up.” Minghao releases a breath heavy enough to set the earth in motion again.

“That has nothing to do with feeling things.”

“I have a feeling our first exam is coming up,” Jeonghan amends, “ever since I looked at the syllabus yesterday and saw that it’s happening next week.” The sunlight filters over him in patches as they step out into the boiling afternoon, and Minghao watches it shift, like all the phases of the moon rolled into one in the middle of the day.

“Right.”

“So did you want to study?”

Minghao squints at him. “I was planning on studying, yeah.”

Jeonghan rolls his eyes. “I mean together.” He pats Minghao’s chest. “The two of us. At the library.” Minghao hums.

“I mean… I guess we can do that.” Truthfully, he knew that’s what Jeonghan was trying to suggest, but he hates the library. He was hoping in part that Jeonghan would give up if he played dumb, but he also knows that Jeonghan is too smart to fall for it and too pushy to let it go. And it’s now that he realizes he knows quite a few things about how Jeonghan is and nothing really at all about who he is. And it’s weird. His hand pats Minghao’s chest again before withdrawing; it is brutally warm.

“You’re a legend,” he says. They come to a stop at a crosswalk, and one of the cars passing by the intersection honks in agreement. “Since the exam is on Wednesday, do you want to meet up Tuesday night? I have class until 5:30, but I can be there by six.”

“Six is fine for me,” Minghao says, and Jeonghan claps his hands together once, loud as thunder.

“Awesome.” The way he’s smiling seems a little too much for pre-exam studying, but Minghao’s chest is still working to unwind itself from nerves, so he doesn’t comment on it. “You better not forget to be there.”

“I won’t forget.”

“You better not!”

“I won’t!”

“Good!” Jeonghan says, and then he is strolling away like it’s nothing, like a leaf being blown in the breeze, voice devolving into faint laughter that manages to echo even in the vast space of the walkway. Just before disappearing into the library, he turns around to wave goodbye, and Minghao rolls his eyes. He wouldn’t forget a thing like that.

Thus, the following Tuesday evening, he finds himself in the library forty minutes early after having very much remembered and been too bored doing nothing to keep himself occupied elsewhere longer. He still hates the library for a lot of reasons—it’s too loud, too crowded, too far from the lot he had to park in this morning—but sitting inside feels at least like he’s about to be doing something useful rather than just wasting time.

He sits in one of the stairs by Starbucks and watches people join the line, barely ever short enough to fit within the bounds of the actual entrance. A few times, he thinks about getting up to join it himself, but then three more people hop on the end, and he stays sitting. It would be nice to have a tea, maybe. But not quite nice enough to stand in that kind of wait. As his willpower is about to crack, he feels a buzz from his phone.

 

**FROM: Jeonghan**

**Omw now. Meet by sb?**

So that settles it. Instead of getting up, he nestles deeper into the chair and sends a quick response, then opens his favorite little game to hate. It’s been a while since he actually sat and played Moon Collector, and the tiny guy on the screen is so comforting to see, hobbling around his narrow path helplessly as Minghao tries to guide him to his small moons. It’s hard to get himself back into focusing on it, but after four tragic deaths, he’s back in the groove.

It’s kind of sad how hopeless this game is. There is no winning, only avoiding losing for as long as possible, and there’s no choice, only turns and turns and turns. There’s no going back to get a moon you might have missed somehow, no saving yourself from demise if you happen to turn when you don’t mean to. It’s frustratingly sad. As Minghao watches his helpless little guy fall off the edge and into oblivion with his meager haul of 38 moons, he’s feeling something a little more complex than just annoyed. Maybe because he also knows this game isn’t supposed to be nearly this existential.

Another handful of untimely demises later, Minghao is in a steady rhythm, and he’s thinking he can beat that high score of 152 this time. Every time he thinks that, he doesn’t get there, but this time, maybe. Very close. Only a few more well-timed taps, and he’ll pass it. The key is not getting too worked up and tapping too quickly, and while he plays he breathes out. Two more, and a small noise by his side shocks him into looking up at the person he hadn’t yet noticed standing beside him.

Jeonghan is looking down at Minghao’s phone screen with the same intensity as Minghao thinks he probably has when he’s playing himself, unblinking, mouth in a tense line. When he sees the player fall and hears the tiny distressed failure sound effect, he turns his attention to Minghao instead, eyes brightening and mouth warming into a grin. Minghao is taller by just a little bit when they’re both standing, and somehow this angle is so daunting, like he’s a single cell under a microscope.

“How long have you been there?” Minghao asks, willing his cheeks not to color in surprise. Jeonghan shrugs.

“Couple minutes.”

“And you didn’t think to say anything?”

“You were so in the zone!” Jeonghan defends. “I didn’t wanna mess you up.” He sighs. “But I did anyway. And your score was so high, too! My high score is, like, thirty.”

Minghao blinks at him. “You play it, too?”

“I mean, I downloaded it, yeah. It’s cute.” Minghao feels a small pressure in the middle of his chest, right against his sternum. It’s faint, but his gut tells him it could break something if he isn’t careful. Beside him, Jeonghan shifts his weight and turns to eye the Starbucks line in a way that makes Minghao uneasy. “Hey, do you wanna get something to drink? I could really go for one of those refresher things.”

Truthfully, Minghao doesn’t, but Jeonghan looks so set on it that he would feel mean saying no. Which is not something he often feels. Must be that soft spot for Moon Collector acting up again.

On minute seven of line waiting, they have advanced toward the middle-back, or maybe the back-middle, which is almost half the battle, and Minghao knows they may as well wait it out now, but it doesn’t stop him from groaning every now and then, nor does it keep his eyes from rolling. “God,” he says, “this is such a waste of time.” Jeonghan chuckles softly at that, a ghost of a response. “You should have just told me you wanted something so I could have gotten in line and had it before you got here.”

“So you’re saying you would’ve gotten me something?”

“I mean…” When he asks like that, it sounds more important. “Yeah?”

“And miss out on quality time with your precious little moon man? I don’t buy it.” He smiles and shuffles forward another few steps. Now they’re just close enough to hear the barista asking for the orders. “But I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”

Eventually, they make their way to the front of the line, and Jeonghan is very animated when he orders, well overcompensating for the energy of the dead-eyed employee. Minghao doesn’t want to get anything, but after waiting so long in line, he feels like it’s a waste not to. He orders a tall green tea because nothing else seems worth it, and while he pays, he feels like it would have been ethically responsible for Jeonghan to pay for it instead since this is all his fault. And he’d love those few dollars back, but the concept of being paid for puts him in another sort of dilemma, so he pretends he never thought about it.

By the time they’ve received their drinks, most of the study tables are filled with other students, and they wind up wandering up and down every hall three times before they find somewhere to sit. It’s on the fourth floor, far back in the corner, and it’s at least not quite as noisy back here, though a large party nearby very loudly studying for an animal science exam seems like it might become a problem. Jeonghan slides into the seat and sets his drink down, blissfully oblivious to their rowdy neighbors, and waits patiently for Minghao to join him.

“So,” he says, “let’s get down to business.”

“Down to economics, you mean.”

“Oh, very funny,” Jeonghan hums, taking a sip. “Soonyoung teach you that one?”

The two possible responses are retaliating in offense or retorting something witty back, but Minghao doesn’t think it’s worth acting mad about, and he’s not always quick enough on his feet to think of something snappy to say, so he just sits silent. He watches Jeonghan, and Jeonghan watches him back, braced for words that aren’t coming. It’s a weird thing to look into someone’s eyes for that long without planning to, without saying anything, weirder that neither of them is looking away yet. Minghao has a hunch Jeonghan will be the first to crack, but a loud howl of laughter from the unruly bunch adjacent makes them both blink, and Jeonghan takes a slow sip of his drink.

“So,” he coughs, “you took a look at the practice exam online, right?”

“At the what?”

“Practice exam.”

“There was one of those?”

“You’re joking, right?” Minghao shakes his head, and Jeonghan wheezes, rests his chin in his hand. “Great. Okay.”

“How was I supposed to know I was supposed to?” Minghao asks, leaning forward. “It’s not like you said anything about it.”

“You seem like someone who prepares well for tests,” Jeonghan says, “so I figured you would already know.”

“You’re assuming I know a lot of things I don’t actually know.”

“Don’t say that,” Jeonghan says, voice low, “because I’m assuming you know jack shit about economics, and if you don’t, that means neither of us do, which is not looking good for that exam.”

Minghao sighs and digs out his notebook, doing his best to obscure most of the doodles in it, though Jeonghan’s eyes crinkle at the sight of them. “Maybe you should try taking some notes of your own.”

“I used to, back when I was your age,” he says, grinning, “but somewhere along the line I realized that they didn’t help and I also can barely even read my own handwriting.” He smacks his hand on the table and nudges the corner of Minghao’s notebook with his fingertips, turning it gently so they can both see. “Enough about that. Where are we starting?”

Most of the time, Jeonghan doesn’t look like he’s listening, and most of the time, Minghao doesn’t feel like he’s explaining any of the right things, but it still feels more productive than doing nothing. Everyone says explaining something to someone else helps you know it better anyway, he figures, so even if Jeonghan isn’t learning anything, surely he’s helping himself out. Normally, Minghao wouldn’t comb through every page of his notebook in order like this, but today he goes almost line by line, from the very first page until the very last. The sun is long set by the time they finish, and both of their cups long empty.

“So,” Jeonghan says as they walk down the stairs to head back toward the exit, “which way are you headed?”

“Toward the earth sciences building,” Minghao groans. “That was the only lot I could find a spot in.”

“What a lovely coincidence,” Jeonghan hums, almost a song, “because I am also heading that way.”

“That so?”

“Very so.” The lights catch on his smile like glitter. “Care to walk with me?”

The evening sky is a bruisy purple, heavy with dark blue clouds that threaten rain, though the air isn’t thick enough to suggest any drops might fall yet. All the lampposts have come on by now, softly glowing dots of yellow stretching all the way down the path like oversized fireflies, and Minghao can appreciate the picturesqueness view even if he hates the walk. It’s so quiet outside compared to the library, the ringing silence right after the fire alarm has cut off, and it’s a nice change to only hear footsteps. He hopes it won’t rain for a while.

Beside him, Jeonghan doesn’t say anything like Minghao thought he would, doesn’t dive into any conversation on how much he likes the new paving on the path or how he’s excited for the campus flowerbeds to be redone. Step after step, all he does is walk along, eyes cast toward the glowing rows on either side of them until they veer off onto a dimmer path. Closer to the earth sciences building, most of the streetlights are older, and they’re spread much farther apart, so they go back and forth between blue tones and color until they reach the parking lot. Between them and the regular lot, there is a single motorcycle parked in one of the small bike spots, and Minghao lets Jeonghan lead them to it before he even thinks to look for his own car.

“Here’s me,” he says, patting the seat. Minghao only stares.

“You’re joking,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“There’s no way you drive this motorcycle.”

It’s a cool looking vehicle, painted a deep purple just a few touches lighter than the sky that shines with subtle iridescence, shiny chrome winding around the front, back, sides. There’s a big black holding pouch over the rear wheel, and Jeonghan pops it open and takes out a large helmet, also shiny, white with purple highlights. As Minghao stands in fierce denial, he watches Jeonghan take a key out of his pocket and stick it in the ignition without turning, then remove a leather jacket from the same compartment as the helmet and shrug it on over his T-shirt.

“Are you kidding me?” Minghao whispers, and Jeonghan only smiles at him while he zips up his jacket.

“What? You think I’m not cool enough to ride a motorcycle?”

“I mean… that’s not really it.” Truthfully, he’d pegged him as more of a Honda Accord. “I’m just a little surprised. I feel like you should have mentioned this sooner if you wanted some more cool points.”

“There’s nothing cooler than surprises,” Jeonghan tells him. “Besides, I don’t need the help. I’m very cool.” When he stuffs his head inside his helmet, Minghao resists a snort. Then he lets it out anyway. Jeonghan’s eyes—the only remaining visible part of his face—narrow. “What’s so funny?”

“You look like a Power Ranger.” Jeonghan laughs harder than Minghao thought he would, harder than he probably deserves, leaning back, chest toward the sky. In the quiet of the growing evening, it’s the only sound that carries.

“Power Rangers are super cool,” he says, then turns the key. A set of low lights glows on the underside of the bike, soft shades of pink. Minghao normally thinks underglow is douchey, but for Jeonghan, he’s strangely willing to forgive it. Gently, Jeonghan eases himself onto the seat, then wraps his hands around the handlebars. They look so bizarrely natural there. His eyes are still smiling when he turns to look at Minghao. “Well, thanks for studying with me! I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you.”

Minghao is halfway to his car when he hears the loud turn of an engine behind him, the insane scream of a few more revs just for good, noisy measure. He knows Jeonghan will be looking at him if he turns around, but he doesn’t stop his body from turning anyway. Atop his bike, Jeonghan’s stare is aimed dead at him, and Minghao can almost see his smile through the helmet as he kicks the engine again. He waves once, an exaggerated swing of his entire arm, then picks his feet up and cruises straight out of the parking lot without looking back.

The sight of him speeding off down the road is lonely somehow, a small blip of warm light racing off into the creeping darkness all around them. Minghao watches him until he’s gone, turned around a corner and disappeared, and as the warm night air settles on his skin, he becomes distantly aware that he’s smiling, distantly sure that he’s wishing for something. Then he pulls out his keys and heads to find his car.

 

Never had Minghao thought there were so many motorcycle riders attending this university, but he starts seeing them everywhere. It’s always the same handful of them, but they’re zipping by every time Minghao turns around, five or six different bikes, but never Jeonghan. And none of them are as cool as Jeonghan’s, either, smaller and weaker looking, blander colors. Even so, he never fails to notice when one cruises by.

“What’s your deal?” Soonyoung asks while they eat lunch in the student union one day, seconds after Minghao turns his head to see one pass by on the street below. It’s small and gray, and the guy riding it is just way too big to be hunching over such a tiny bike, but it keeps its balance while swinging around the corner anyway.

“Did we always have so many motorcycle riders here?” he asks absently, still watching the corner just in case something else will come around it. When he returns to facing Soonyoung, he’s faced with two very raised eyebrows.

“I would have to say yeah, probably.” He doesn’t blink for a while, just stares Minghao down while taking bites of his burrito. “Do you have, like, some thing with motorcycles now? Why do you care?” Slowly, his mouth twists into a grin, five parts smug and four parts ass. “Did a motorcycle ask you about Moon Collector?”

Minghao rolls his eyes. “Yeah, definitely,” he says, and then he starts thinking at himself the same way Soonyoung does. Why does he care? It’s a pretty good question. Soonyoung drives a Subaru, and though he does think of him for just a second every time he sees another Subaru on the road, he definitely doesn’t watch them all the way to the end every time. Maybe it’s because he also knows other people who drive Subarus, but he only knows one Jeonghan who rides a motorcycle. If he knew a bunch of guys in a biker gang, it would probably be a little different. But he doesn’t know any biker gangs, so he can’t help but feel like every single motorcycle in the world is connected to Jeonghan somehow. They might be.

“Well, whatever,” Soonyoung says, taking another bite. “Anyway, Junhui and I were gonna have, like, a game night soon. Do you think you’ll be free Saturday night?”

“Who says I even want to be there?”

“Your obligation as a friend.” Minghao smiles, faint. “And your name on the lease.”

“Yeah, I’m free Saturday.”

“Sweet,” Soonyoung says, though he probably already figured it. “Do you think you could pass word along to Jeonghan, too?”

“Why do I have to do it?”

“Because you see him, like, every day.”

“Just text him.”

“I’m not asking you to build a house here,” Soonyoung groans. “Would you just tell him he’s welcome to come? You’re gonna see him in like…” He clicks his phone to life and checks the time on the screen. “Forty-five minutes.”

“Fine.”

“There’s a good sport,” Soonyoung chuckles, slapping his arm a little too hard. “I hope he comes. It’ll be fun. Besides, I know you like him.”

For a full second, Minghao stops breathing. What a bold accusation. Then he realizes that Soonyoung didn’t mean it the way Minghao thought he meant it. Then he realizes he shouldn’t have thought Soonyoung was meaning it that way to begin with. Because people do, by nature, like their friends. Thinking about this should make breathing a little easier, but it doesn’t. Minghao sips at his water and tries to stop thinking about it, but another motorcycle passing by outside catches his attention, and his throat is so dry. It’s dark blue this time, completely dull. He misses purple.

Jeonghan says he’ll be there Saturday, just like Minghao knew he would. He smiles a lot throughout the lecture, which Minghao knows because he keeps feeling like he better check to see what he’s up to. Once, he finds Jeonghan looking back at him already. A small smile folds his lips, and he pokes his tongue out just for just a moment, and that’s when Minghao decides he should pay more attention to the doodles overtaking his page of notes. As Jeonghan ambles off after class is finished, he calls a cheery, “Can’t wait for Saturday!” over his shoulder, and Minghao offers him a gentle wave goodbye before he realizes his arm is moving.

Thus, Saturday arrives, and Minghao is busy deciding which of the six bags of chips Soonyoung bought to set out first. Wonwoo has already come over, playing a heated battle of Smash on the couch with Soonyoung, and Jihoon is on the way, allegedly with drinks. Seokmin is also here, watching over Soonyoung’s shoulder eagerly as he gets wrecked time and time again by Wonwoo as Wii Fit Trainer. It’s amazing how often he manages to lose, but when you don’t even know where the buttons are the way he doesn’t, there’s only so much hope to be had.

After another short while, Jihoon arrives, and Junhui welcomes him with a warm clamor, fluttering around his shoulders every time he moves, always with something busy to say. The apartment is at the point now where it’s not quite enough people to feel crowded but also not enough to feel very occupied, a comfortable six that sanctions well into three pairs and two trios, almost balanced against the space at their disposal. One more attendee will throw them into a crowd, and Minghao can’t figure out if he wants that.

No matter how many times he checks his phone, there’s still no word from Jeonghan, and he doesn’t understand why he’s so nervous over whether he’ll make it. This feels like a sales pitch, a promise for the most spectacular new product, and now he’s waiting on the prototype to be made; but that analogy doesn’t quite fit. This is Soonyoung’s sales pitch, and Minghao is just holding up the poster board image of the promised new gadget beside him, yet he still feels like it’s sink or swim from here.

At last, the far-off rumble of Jeonghan’s motorcycle driving up comes to him from outside the window. It’s hard to make out at first, quiet against the distance, but as it nears, Minghao’s sure it can’t be anything else. He flits to the window just in time to watch Jeonghan cruise by and slide into one of the visitor spots that could fit him four times over. He sits there for a minute, pulling out his phone and tapping out something quick on the screen, before dismounting and walking in. This time, he’s carrying his helmet in with him, swinging around by his fist in all its Power Ranger glory. Just as Minghao heads to open the door for him, he feels a small buzz in his pocket.

“Evening,” Jeonghan says when he crosses the threshold. His cheeks are a little pink, hair disheveled from his helmet, and his eyes sparkle over a broad grin in the evening light. A few of the growing blues outside leak in alongside him like creeping paint.

“Whoa, what’s the helmet for?” Soonyoung asks. He watches Jeonghan set it down and shrug off his leather jacket with wide eyes, oblivious to the carnage Wonwoo wreaks on him from only feet away in their unpaused game of Smash.

“My bike,” Jeonghan says. “So I don’t die. What’s going on in here?”

“Smash,” Wonwoo grunts, knocking Soonyoung’s Kirby offstage again. “Wanna join? Soonyoung sucks ass, so he could use the help.”

“I don’t suck ass,” Soonyoung whines, kicking at him. “You’re just really good.”

“It’s both, probably,” Jihoon muses, fanning Junhui away where he tries to collapse over him. “And Seokmin is just as bad.”

“I’ll play, then,” Jeonghan says, forcing himself onto the couch where there’s nowhere near enough space for him. “But I’m not that great, either.”

“You’re still probably better,” Wonwoo tells him, and he sends Kirby to death for the final time with a very evil laugh.

There are definitely too many people here now. Somebody needs to leave, and it needs to be Minghao, but he can’t because he lives here, and he also can’t because he doesn’t really want to. It’s not even that he feels too crowded every second, but sometimes, when there’s a lull in the noise or he stands to get a drink from the kitchen, he sees how full the living room is and feels like all his organs are pressing too close together inside. Like he’s locked in a cage that hovers just a centimeter above the skin. Like his shoelaces are tied together, but instead of just his shoes, it’s his whole body.

Eventually, they switch from Smash to Mario Party, and Jeonghan surrenders his position on the couch to Minghao in favor of watching the action from the floor. He sits right in front, leaning back against Minghao’s legs while they play, shoulder blades just pressing into his shins. His back is warm, and Minghao really doesn’t want it to be leaning up against his legs, but he’s also afraid to move and make Jeonghan stir in the process.

Again, he’s got that feeling that Jeonghan will always be doing something, even though he doesn’t know what. It’s easier now to check, with Jeonghan right in front of him, but no matter how many glances Minghao takes, he’s not up to anything. His back is just a back. Hair just hair. Shoulders only shoulders. The more he looks, the more Jeonghan seems to turn into a fixture of the room, a statue that’s always here somewhere. He stretches his arms out in a yawn once, and it throws Minghao so much he loses the minigame instantly.

They wind down their activities around eleven thirty because Jeonghan doesn’t trust night roads on a glorified bicycle and Jihoon has a paper he actually should have been writing this entire time (which means he cares, Junhui says). Jeonghan shrugs his jacket on and huffs a preemptive breath against the lukewarm chill he knows is waiting for him outside, then picks his helmet up and hugs it to his chest.

“Wish me luck against the wind,” he says, and Soonyoung turns to appraise him again, eyebrows raised slightly.

“Wait a second,” he says. “Do you, like, have a motorcycle?”

“He only said that when he got here,” Jihoon scoffs. He’s supposed to be leaving, too, but he still sits on the couch, very much entangled by every limb Junhui has fit around him. Soonyoung rolls his eyes but smiles all the same.

“That’s pretty cool, though!” A spark glows behind his eyes, and Minghao has a bad feeling about it before he understands why he ought to. “Oh, Minghao!” he calls, suddenly excited, swatting at Minghao’s shoulder. “Did you hear that? He has a motorcycle.” Jeonghan eyes them carefully before his lips break into a slim grin. It’s probably not supposed to be as smug as it seems.

“Minghao already knows,” he promises, clutching his helmet just a little tighter. “He thinks I’m not cool enough for it.”

“I didn’t say that,” Minghao defends, and Jeonghan laughs by the doorway like it’s the funniest joke he could have told. Between them, Soonyoung turns his head slowly, a lunar rover taking its time to gather information.

“Well, see you all later,” Jeonghan says, cracking the door open behind him and stepping backwards into the blackness. “Thanks for having me over.” Soonyoung bids his soft goodbye with nothing more than a hum, and just as quickly, he’s back to staring at Minghao.

There’s something unsettling about his eyes, a strange and subdued light inside them that makes Minghao feel like he’s been caught in a lie he never meant to tell. It dawns on him after a while that what he’s seeing is knowing, that Soonyoung is looking at him like he knows something. “So you already knew he had a motorcycle,” he says. “I guess he told you that pretty recently?” Behind his forehead, Minghao sees so many dots connecting, and he wishes he could get up and leave. The others have fallen back into conversation around them, but it sounds miles away. When Soonyoung only keeps staring, waiting for him to admit something, Minghao remembers he got a text earlier and takes his phone out to check it. Of course, all it does is mock him.

 

**FROM: Jeonghan**

**Here now :-)** **you better let me in**

 

He takes a long look at the ceiling and sighs.

 

Soonyoung says a lot in the way he won’t say anything at all. He spends a lot of time looking at Minghao and waiting for him to admit something, but Minghao doesn’t know what he wants him to admit. Actually he does know, but he just doesn’t want to admit it. Because it isn’t true. This does nothing to stop Soonyoung from acting like a parent disappointed that his otherwise well-behaved son won’t confess to having eaten the final cookie in the jar.

One night as they eat dinner, Junhui starts telling a story about some encounter he had at the student union, though Minghao only pays half attention to it, because Junhui has a bad habit of getting wordy and mentioning the same thing three or four times. He’s fading in and out on the details until Junhui mentions his search for a table. He says something about how he spent at least ten minutes looking for one because he doesn’t like to sit within one table of someone who’s already eating, and it reminds him of something like that Jeonghan told him, about how when he gets to classes really early he won’t sit within two rows of where someone else is already sitting unless he absolutely has to.

“You sound like Jeonghan,” Minghao tells him, and instead of steamrolling through the rest of the story like normal, Junhui stops to smirk and raise his eyebrows. On the other side of the table, Soonyoung is making a similar expression, and the apartment feels like one huge corner.

“Oh, do I?” he asks, leaning forward to put his chin in his palm. “What makes you lump me in with him? Are you in love with me, too?” Minghao chokes on the next bite of pizza as he takes it.

“Excuse me?” he coughs.

“You can take me out sometime,” Junhui teases, light. “I’m an easy man.”

“I don’t think Jihoon would let that slide.”

“Seeing as he’s still avoiding the d-word”—not ‘damn,’ Minghao reminds himself, but ‘dating’—“I’m sure he would act like he doesn’t care. But getting me to talk about Jihoon isn’t gonna work this time, pal.” His nose scrunches up. He looks like a baby when he does this, but it always means he thinks he’s being crafty. “This is about you and the elephant in the room.”

“What’s that elephant, exactly?”

“Two elephants now, actually,” Soonyoung chimes in, nibbling at his crust. “The first elephant is you being in love with Jeonghan, and the new elephant is that you didn’t even deny it.”

“Okay, well,” Minghao chokes out. Sauce and cheese have started to feel more like cement in his throat, and he’s trying to find a good excuse for not expecting this, but his hands come up empty. “I am definitely not in love with that guy.”

“Very convincing,” Junhui snorts.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” Minghao looks at the remaining half slice on his plate, but he doesn’t really have the appetite for it anymore. His stomach is abuzz with something else. “He’s just my friend who I sit with in class. I don’t know why you think it has to be like that.”

“Okay,” Soonyoung allows, “but how about you explain this one: you have never once said a thing about motorcycles to me or anyone else, and suddenly now you’re locking eyes on every single motorcycle that comes within a ten-mile radius like you have a sixth sense or something.” He holds up both pointer fingers and brings them together gently to form a two-dimensional tent in front of his chest. “And somewhere between these two periods of time, Jeonghan tells you that he has a motorcycle.” His two fingertips tap together expectantly.

“What do you want me to say?” Minghao asks. “They’re cool. I just never thought about it until I had a friend with one, I guess.”

“Is this why all your relationships fail?” Junhui says, more a statement than a question. Minghao blinks at him.

“Excuse me?”

“Either you know you like him and are lying to us just to be weird, or your brain is trying to send you signals and you’re a moron who can’t pick them up.” Junhui frowns and shakes his head. “Either way, it’s sad.”

Minghao rolls his eyes. “I don’t want to hear about failed relationships from someone whose boyfriend won’t even call himself a boyfriend.”

“Low blow,” Junhui breathes, “but at least Jihoon can admit he likes me.”

“I do not want to have this conversation anymore.” Minghao slaps his palms on the table and stands up. “I have to study for my exam on Friday. I’ll be back when you guys are done being assholes with no brains.”

“Study?” Soonyoung howls after him. “It’s econ, right? You’re not gonna study.” There’s a beat of silence before he speaks again. “You’re just gonna go meet up with Jeonghan to study tomorrow.” Unfortunately, he’s right.

This time, Jeonghan already sits waiting at the library when Minghao arrives, settled deep into one of the armchairs in front of the Starbucks. Two drinks rest precariously on the chair’s armrest, identical but for one being the small size and the other medium, and Jeonghan’s arm rests right behind them, hovering just far back enough not to touch. His eyes are closed as Minghao approaches, mouth a neutral line. Is he sleeping? Maybe, Minghao thinks. Something, though, seems just off enough. Minghao stands before him for a few seconds trying to figure out what it is, but gives up.

“I know you’re not asleep,” he chances. For a moment, Jeonghan makes no movement, and Minghao thinks maybe he was wrong, but then his eyes flutter open and he sits up a little straighter.

“You’re very attentive,” he muses. “I thought you’d buy it for sure.”

“Yeah, right.” Jeonghan’s arm jostles one of his two drinks while he moves to pull himself further upright, and Minghao holds his breath until he’s sure it won’t fall. “Thirsty, huh?”

“What makes you think so?”

“You have two drinks.” Minghao gestures to them just to make sure they’re both on the same page, and Jeonghan blinks slowly.

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah.” Then he smiles, picks up the smaller one, and holds it forward. “This one is for you, though.”

“Huh?”

“I think you’ll like it,” he continues, shaking the cup until Minghao feels compelled to take it by fear of its being dropped, “but I got the little one just to be safe.” They stay there for a moment, Jeonghan’s eyes expectant, body frozen. “Aren’t you gonna try it?”

“I came to study,” Minghao says, “not sample beverages.”

“You’re such a weirdo.” Jeonghan kicks lightly at his ankle. “Just try it.”

“Can we go find somewhere to sit down first?”

“Try it and then we’ll go.”

“Why?”

“Just a sip.” As long as Minghao keeps staring, Jeonghan doesn’t look like he’ll budge. It’s wearing at his patience so much more gently than it should be. “It won’t kill you.”

He doesn’t seem like he’ll fold, so Minghao decides to be the bigger person and take a drink, even though it scares him. Halfway to his lips, his hand freezes up. It scares him. Why should it scare him? It’s just a drink. If Jeonghan were going to poison him, he wouldn’t do it so publicly. Minghao thinks this, gets his arm to start moving again, but he knows he’s not afraid of dying. It’s something else, right now. Something he can’t quite lay any of his fingers on.

The drink is sweeter than it looks, almost a little too sweet, but the flavor is nice. It’s fruity and refreshing—Minghao could have guessed, maybe, from the odd strawberry slices resting among the ice—and it makes him feel a little bit like spring in the fall. Jeonghan watches him with hopeful patience, and a dangerous thought creeps into Minghao’s head: this is probably what he would taste like if he were a flavor. But that’s wrong, he thinks. He drinks again to distract himself, but the thought is already there, and when Jeonghan won’t look away, somehow the whole world seems like it’s tilted a few degrees. Just enough to mess everything up.

“How is it?” he asks, glittering. “You like it?”

“It’s good,” Minghao says. His throat is closing fast, and all he can think to do is keep drinking.

“I knew it,” Jeonghan cheers softly, rising to his feet and heaving his bag to his shoulders. He’s standing too close. “Let’s go study, then.”

Their spot for the evening is much quieter than the last time they studied together, but Minghao doesn’t know if he likes it. Last time, there’d been too much to distract him, but now there isn’t enough. No loud voices echoing from beyond his periphery, no occasional bursts of laughter from adjacent groups. They’re too far removed from everything else, and there’s nothing here but Jeonghan. There’s nothing but Jeonghan, so he’s all Minghao can think about.

He says something, something about the notes he’s written or a comment the professor made in lecture, but doesn’t hear his own words. Rather, he’s eyeing Jeonghan’s face as he listens, watching the way his gaze shifts, the way lights move around in his irises. He starts paying attention to his lips and the subtle ways they move, the pinkness of them, and his head drifts back to that drink he hasn’t finished yet and the pinkness of it, the pink way it tastes. A stern cough reels him back, and Jeonghan raises his eyebrows in concern. Pink, huh? Minghao tries not to feel it on his cheeks.

It’s because of Soonyoung and Junhui. They’re the ones who had the gall to make some accusations, and now Minghao’s got all kinds of crazy thoughts running through his head, so many risky what-ifs and who-whens and where-nows he never would have thought about if only they’d kept their mouths shut. Now Minghao can’t even focus on the material, and he’s supposed to be the responsible one. He can make out his voice while he continues to explain, but he has no idea what he’s saying. Watching the attentive way Jeonghan nods across from him, he hopes it’s something decent.

It’s dark by the time they leave, streetlamps glowing weakly against the encroaching darkness they can never hope to keep at bay. Today, Minghao parked in the lot near the business building, which is in the exact opposite direction of the exit they come out of, but he doesn’t feel like going to his car quite yet. Jeonghan kicks the ground by the benches while he thanks Minghao for studying with him again. Minghao holds back the guilt he feels over not paying attention. Or maybe it was paying too much attention. Dim evening light looks like silver dripping down Jeonghan’s hair.

“Well, I’m parked over by the music building,” Jeonghan says, shrugging his coat on a little more snugly. The time of the year has come when the nights are getting chilly without the days getting any cooler. “So I guess I’ll get going.” A moment passes around them, the sky moving with invisible steps, silent on the air.

“Mind if I walk with you?” Minghao asks. Jeonghan’s eyes shine with surprise, and Minghao is a little surprised too, but not enough to take it back. A slow smile curls Jeonghan’s lips.

“I would love it if you walked with me.”

As they walk, the chill of the evening starts to creep in from around the shoulders, and Minghao shivers just a little bit. It’s not that it’s cold, necessarily, but that Minghao was expecting it to be a lot warmer, and his thin coat doesn’t offer enough to balance him out. The sky doesn’t seem like it’ll rain, but the air has that weight in it, a thick sort of coolness that makes your skin feel too tight. Maybe Minghao’s just imagining it. He should have gone straight back to his car instead.

“Actually,” Jeonghan says, coming to a stop at the crosswalk, “I was afraid you were annoyed about having to come help me study.”

“Annoyed?”

“You know,” Jeonghan says, waving his hand around, “you kinda had that look like you were pissed off.” He grins, and across from them, the small walking man turns pale green. “But you’re voluntarily spending more time with me, so I guess I was wrong.”

Minghao hums. Pissed off. Maybe that’s what he would look like when he’s distracted to someone who doesn’t know any better, and he guesses Jeonghan really doesn’t know any better. Three times a week for an hour apiece is hardly enough time together to say you really know someone. Much less be in love with them. Soonyoung and Junhui flash through his brain for a moment, and maybe it’s true that he was pissed off, just a little bit.

“Actually,” he says, “I’m just walking with you so I can see your motorcycle.”

“Ah, so that’s how it is,” Jeonghan muses softly. For a second, Minghao thinks he sounds a little hurt, but then a low chuckle dances by his ears. “Well, I guess I can’t blame you. She is the sweetest ride on campus two years running.” Minghao’s chest feels off-balance at the way he says that. Fondly referring to his motorcycle like it’s a friend, using those bizarre, dated phrases nobody’s really said since the turn of the century. All the lampposts seem so far behind them now.

“Two years?” By now, they’re coming into view of the parking lot, and Minghao can make out the silhouette of Jeonghan’s bike, alone in the short line of motorcycle spots and drenched in moonlight. “So that’s how long you’ve been riding it?”

“This one, yeah,” Jeonghan says, “but I got my motorcycle license when I was a sophomore, so it’s been more like three-and-a-half years since I’ve actually been riding in general.”

“Ah, really?” Somehow, it’s surprising. Minghao doesn’t know whether he was expecting a shorter time frame or a longer one, but three-and-a-half years is so awkwardly in the middle. His head feels too empty and too full in a way he doesn’t want to try understanding. “What kind of bike did you have before?”

“Nothing special.” His footfalls slow as they near it, a subtle sort of reluctance to meet the inevitable end that spreads over to Minghao as well. Slow though they may go, the path is already set. All they can do now is continue forward until they’ve arrived at the bike. When they reach it, Jeonghan sets a hand on the seat and smiles. “I mean, it was special to me because it was my first bike, but you know. Not really in any other ways.” He unlocks the compartment on the back and pulls out his helmet and leather jacket, eyes glittering. “Let’s just say nobody was taking walks with me to get a look at it.”

“That so?”

Looking at it again, Minghao feels a renewed sense of how cool it is. The silver light of the evening traces along every edge, and in the brightest spots, he can see where the iridescence of the paint waxes pink over purple, a subtle gradient of encroaching sunset. He’s never been very interested in machines from an observational standpoint, but something about this one captivates him like it shouldn’t. The backlit silhouette swallows him like handfuls of moons he can never finish collecting.

“Wow,” Jeonghan says after a while. He’s already got his jacket on when Minghao looks at him, helmet firm under one arm. “You weren’t kidding.”

“Huh?”

“I thought you were just joking about using me to get to my bike.” He still smiles, but his eyes don’t look like they want to be part of it. Minghao coughs.

“I mean, obviously that’s a joke,” he says. “It’s just, you know. It’s really cool. The way the light catches on it and the colors and stuff.” He moves his hand around in the air like he’s gathering invisible cotton candy on his wrist. “And the shape of it.”

“Really?” Jeonghan whistles and takes another look. “I guess that’s an artsy way to think about it, yeah.”

“Well, I am an artist.”

“You are?” Jeonghan’s attention is back on Minghao like lightning, eyes aglow with something more than lingering streetlights. “That’s so cool! So you paint and stuff?”

“When I feel like it, yeah,” Minghao says, “but that’s not the kind of art I do.” Jeonghan frowns. Everybody always thinks drawing pictures is the only art there is.

“What do you do, then?”

“Photography.” Minghao holds his hands up like he’s taking a picture and pretends to click the capture button on his imaginary camera. “My major is studio art with a concentration in photography.”

“Wow. You never told me that.”

“When was I supposed to mention it?”

“Any time, I guess.” For a long moment, he holds a stare on Minghao, eyes unwavering from his face. Ever so slightly, his breath is visible on the air. “It’s cool. I would have mentioned it first, probably.” Something inside Minghao is off-balance. This conversation is too familiar.

“Well,” he says, “it’s not gonna be so cool when I can’t get a job and die trying to pay back my student loans.”

“Alright, Debbie Downer.” Jeonghan smiles a thin smile and sighs a few drops of warm mist onto the empty space between them, leaning his head to one side. “At least you like doing it. I’m not exactly jazzed about communications.”

“Communications,” Minghao repeats softly. It takes him a few seconds to realize he didn’t really mean to say anything out loud, and he only notices because Jeonghan keeps looking at him like that, head cocked sideways like he’ll see something from this angle he can’t usually spot. Minghao opens his mouth to say something, but his mind draws a blank, so he shuts his lips back just as quickly. Jeonghan stays silent for a minute longer before straightening his head again.

“I guess I didn’t mention it, either,” he says. There’s a lot, Minghao guesses, that neither of them have mentioned. “Doesn’t really seem like my thing though, does it? Communications.” He blows breath out through his nose, invisible. “Maybe it does. I don’t know. It sounds like a legit major, though, so my parents are happy with it.”

If now is a good time to ask what he would’ve been doing instead, if he were doing what he wanted and not what sounded ok, Minghao can’t tell, so he doesn’t ask. But he does wonder. In parts, he can see Jeonghan doing a lot of different things, chasing so many different passions despite not knowing himself what those passions are. In other parts, he can’t see anything else, can’t see any route that doesn’t lead to the two of them talking right here under the distant glow of streetlamps in early autumn. He’s dying to ask.

“I think,” Jeonghan says after a little while, “that if my parents didn’t get on me, I would’ve done something like philosophy.” It’s so hard to picture. Who even studies philosophy these days? What kind of philosopher rides a motorcycle? Jeonghan smiles. “I know you didn’t ask, but I just felt like sharing.” Fine dew hangs in the air around him like space dust. “So hey, would you show me some pictures you’ve taken sometime?”

“Why?”

“What, is it a crime to want to see them?” Jeonghan scoffs. “Are they bad or something?”

Minghao rolls his eyes. “That’s like asking a chef if his food is bad.” Jeonghan’s eyes crinkle.

“So they _are_ bad.”

“I’ll show some to you, sometime, if I remember my camera,” Minghao says. A chill sneaks down his spine and drips through every bone in his body. “You’ll have to remind me to bring it, though, since I don’t just carry it around.”

“I’ll remind you,” Jeonghan tells him, heaving his helmet finally to secure it over his head. Minghao can’t quite help the chuckle that creeps out of him. “Well, you look cold, so I’ll head out. Thanks for studying with me today.”

“I’m not cold,” Minghao tells him. Once again, he doesn’t need to see Jeonghan’s mouth to know he’s smiling.

“Sure you aren’t,” he says, muffled. “See you tomorrow.”

Minghao turns around to walk off, and he makes it a good ways down the path before he hears Jeonghan’s engine turn. There’s a quiet beat of nothing but rumbling, then a loud rev, then another. Theoretically, he could just ignore it and keep walking, and Jeonghan would have no option but to stop and go home. There’s also no doubt in even the deepest shadows of Minghao’s mind that Jeonghan is watching him walk off, waiting for him to turn around and see. He knows exactly what he’ll find if he stops, if he looks. He knows, yet he stops and looks anyway.

Jeonghan looks so small in the distance, but the pink glow on the underside of his bike is hauntingly loud, brighter than every lamp lining the sidewalks rolled into one. True to form, he’s facing the direction Minghao walked in, probably doing his best to spot him in the darkness. He flails one arm above his head in excitement, revs the engine one more time, then pulls off to the street and jets into nowhere. A shiver starts to run through Minghao’s shoulders, but he stands and watches until the last drops of pink light have dissolved into the evening air.

 

It’s hard to stop thinking. Every time Minghao closes his eyes, he sees traces of pink, then he sees Jeonghan looking at him. Always, it’s that same expression like he’s trying to really understand what he’s looking at, head tilted just barely and cool with shadows. He can feel Jeonghan’s eyes burning into him even when he’s not around, and the way it makes the nerves in his neck tense up is so far beyond regular discomfort. Sitting beside him in class, he still feels compelled to check every few minutes to see what he’s doing, but now he can’t. Something between his lungs knows Jeonghan will look back at him, and he’s tired of being looked at.

He winds up thinking about it again in the library. Usually, he doesn’t go on his own, but lately, Junhui and Soonyoung are even more annoying than ever, so he doesn’t want to go home. Maybe they’ve got good reason, and maybe they’ve got a point, but Minghao refuses to let himself think it. That’s music he isn’t in the mood to face. Of course, when he comes to the library and sees Jeonghan’s features in the abstract doodles lining the margins of his notes, it’s a different piece from the same movement.

This whole thing is so stupid. What is Minghao, in middle school? He’s emotionally mature enough by now to know when he has feelings for someone, and he’s too old to let jabs from his supposed friends confuse him. So it’s ridiculous that his stomach hurts every time he thinks about Jeonghan. It’s more ridiculous that he thinks about Jeonghan so much. After a while, he gives up on poring over notes and opts for looking back through the pictures he took earlier for his next photography project.

The project is supposed to show something like the balance between nature and human impact on campus—his professor is really into that sort of meaningful photography. He stopped earlier to take pictures by the main walkway of campus, by the student union, by the entrances of some lecture halls, and they’re all fine, but none of them are great. Maybe he was too frustrated. There’s something just a little bit off about all the angles, like they don’t capture enough of the nature somehow, and he wants to get past it, but he can’t. He clicks through all of them a few times over before deciding to give up and take his chances heading home.

When he walks outside, the sky is so much darker than he expects it to be, a side-effect of the coming of fall. It’s started getting chilly now, sometimes even as early as afternoon, and Minghao draws his jacket a little tighter around himself while he walks. Along the horizon, a few of the final patches of daytime color bleed into one another, the faintest strip of orange below an array of ruddy pinks. Minghao hurries to the closest bench to pull his camera from his bag and take a picture of it. He’s always liked photographing the sky even though there isn’t much to do with it. They never come out quite like the world his eyes see, and adding effects to them just doesn’t bring the same feeling. They certainly don’t fit with the theme of nature and human impact.

Maybe he ought to try giving it another go. After all, this whole campus is nothing but material for this stupid project, and if he looks at it from enough sides, he’s bound to get something usable. Taking pictures usually helps him to clear his head anyway. With another breath in, he decides to go ahead and give himself another chance.

Of course, when it’s dark like this, there’s not much he can do. Instead of looking for a good subject, he finds himself walking in aimless pursuit of nothing. It’s not until he reaches the parking lot by the music building that he realizes his legs were bringing him here since the beginning, but even though he’s made it, he doesn’t know why here. It’s not that close, it’s not where he parked, and there’s not necessarily much nature around the campus parking lots in general. This one at least has a few flowering bushes by one edge, planted a little too close so their blossoms are prone to being knocked off by reckless vehicles. Minghao figures they might be a place to start, at least.

As he weaves through half-empty rows of parked cars to get to the side with the shrubs, he spots something that makes gravity feel just a little bit heavier. Were there always motorcycle spots on this side? He can’t quite remember, but he never cared enough before to notice. The important thing is that right now, there are motorcycle spots on this side, and right now, one of them is filled. He knows the bike. It’s the only one really worth paying attention to; even if he tried, he wouldn’t be able to remember what any of the others on campus look like right now.

While the opposite end of the lot lies bathed in darkness, this side basks in the glow of its very own streetlamp, tall and proud just six feet away from Jeonghan’s motorcycle. It drenches the frame in an artificial moonlight that softens it strangely, makes it seem to melt into the darkness beyond. By the front wheel, a branch lined with flowers reaches out like the extended hand of a friend, and Minghao stops in his tracks, quiet to be sure he won’t scare the scene in front of him away. Even the sound of the shutter feels too loud. Slowly, he crouches to his knees and levels the lens in front of his eye.

The lighting isn’t great, but it does enough. From this angle, a shadowed iteration of the flowers falls on the concrete, and it merges into the shadow of the motorcycle so naturally it puts a lump in Minghao’s throat. Carefully, he crawls a bit closer, takes a few more shots, shuffles to the side. Maybe none of them are coming out like he wants, but he can’t help the feeling in his stomach that he needs to take a few more. There’s something about the way the flowers come so close to the wheel but don’t quite touch, something a little bit special, and he’s halfway to figuring it out when he hears the soft rhythm of footsteps coming up behind him.

“Lovely evening,” says a voice from above when the footsteps cease. Jeonghan is smiling when Minghao turns to look up at him, but his face is hard to look at from so far below. Even if he didn’t look, Minghao would still know.

“Sure is,” he says. The air sits quietly around them for a single breathless moment.

“I don’t suppose you asked for permission to take pictures of my motorcycle and I just blacked out and forgot about it.”

“You gave me permission by parking it in public,” Minghao scoffs. “If you didn’t want me to take pictures of it, you should have left it at home.”

Jeonghan’s laugh is quiet, barely discernible above the sound of evening. “I think we both know you don’t really think that way,” he says, and Minghao’s legs aren’t quite enough to hold him up anymore, but he can’t crumble to the ground. “I’ll let it slide if you show me the pictures, though.”

“What do you mean by ‘let it slide’?”

“I mean I won’t report you to campus police for invasion of privacy.”

“As if they would even take you seriously,” Minghao groans. “But you can see the pictures.”

“Sweet.”

Jeonghan’s hand extends gently until it’s just beside Minghao’s head, knuckles near enough to graze his hair but still just far enough away. It takes a minute of silent staring for Minghao to realize Jeonghan is trying to help him up. He doesn’t need any help getting to his feet, but he grabs hold of Jeonghan’s hand anyway and pulls himself upright.

It’s soft. Overwhelmingly. His fingertips are featherlight, though they don’t hover. Even though his grip is full, even though callouses still line the bends of his fingers, Minghao doesn’t feel like he’s touching anything; half of him expects his own fist to clench on itself as he falls back to the concrete. The only other tell is that it’s warm, so much warmer than Minghao thought it could ever be. It spreads beyond his hand, up the rest of his arm like flame on gunpowder. Jeonghan holds onto his hand a bit longer even after he’s steady on his feet, squeezes just a little bit, and Minghao’s chest seizes up in a fear he can’t explain. When Jeonghan lets go, he still can’t breathe right, and he still can’t explain it.

“Why were you taking pictures of my bike, anyway?” he asks, walking toward the bike in question. Minghao follows behind him on uneven feet, desperate for his ribs to get resituated around his lungs.

“For a project,” he says.

“What kind of project?”

“The balance between nature and humanity,” Minghao tells him, huffing. “That’s what it’s supposed to be about.” Jeonghan raises his eyebrows.

“And my bike fits into this how?”

“It’s a machine, so it’s the humanity, kind of,” Minghao explains, then gestures toward their feet, where the branch of flowers lingers still. “And there are these flowers, which is nature.” For a bit, Jeonghan only looks back at him wordlessly, and Minghao can’t tell what’s going on behind his eyes no matter how long he gazes back. “Well, you don’t have to get it,” he sighs after a while. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I trust you.” It sounds so heavy, and Minghao is still crumbling, has been since the soles of Jeonghan’s shoes crept to the pavement beside him. “Can I see them, then?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Minghao opens his camera to the screen of previous captures, and before he’s decided how best to hold it so they can both see, Jeonghan has crept around behind him and drawn in close to his back. He radiates a subtle sort of close warmth, just enough to keep Minghao from forgetting who he’s with and to make him forget everything else about where he is and what he’s doing. Since he’s a few inches shorter, Jeonghan’s chin hovers directly over Minghao’s shoulder, impossibly close without touching. Minghao thinks for just a second that he’ll bring it to rest there, and he wonders what he would do if he did. He wonders what he should do. God, does he wonder a lot.

“These are the ones I just took,” he says, flicking backwards through them slowly. Jeonghan hums right beside his ear, and it makes Minghao’s whole skeleton wobble.

“They are really cool,” he says softly, eyes unmoving from the small camera screen. Minghao risks a glance at his face, and it’s a mistake. His eyelashes are long and sloping down, glittering with incandescence. He looks pretty.

Without meaning to, Minghao recalls the first time he saw Jeonghan and the way he knew he would remember that face by accident. Accidentally, he remembers this look now, too, burned quick on the backs of his eyelids. This is a dangerous road.

“Alright,” he says, gruff. “Are you happy now?” Though he’s already turned away again, he feels Jeonghan’s eyes on him.

“Are these the only pictures you have?”

“These are the only ones I took just now.”

“Show me the other ones.”

“Seriously?”

“Come on,” Jeonghan drawls, nudging Minghao in the side with one finger. “You said I could see them.” Minghao sighs. Maybe he did say that.

“Whatever. Here are some more I took earlier.”

Scrolling through these shots with Jeonghan shouldn’t make him nervous, but it does. He never gets nervous submitting them to professors for grades, but he’s tangled in nerves right now, even though he knows Jeonghan doesn’t think enough about photography to be critical, won’t say anything to begin with that isn’t nice. Minghao is painfully aware again of how mediocre the pictures he took earlier in the day are, and he wants to skip through them. His palms are clamming up with every silent second that goes by, and god, why is he so nervous?

“Why are you going through them so fast?” Jeonghan asks, hushed, and all the muscles in Minghao’s neck freeze.

“I’m not,” he fibs gingerly. “You’re just looking at them slow.”

“Well, do me a favor, then, and let me take my time.” Now he rests his chin on Minghao’s shoulder, and it’s an impossible weight to bear. Minghao flounders in the wake of it, still not sure what he’s supposed to do or how he’s supposed to feel. “Just a little slower,” Jeonghan says, quiet. “I want to really look at them.”

Now he goes through the pictures slowly, but the rest of the world is whirring around him. His thumb keeps clicking back through the photo queue, but his mind is completely elsewhere, eyes looking so far into the distance they can’t see a thing. Jeonghan’s chin on his shoulder is oppressive, an unbearable weightlessness, and all Minghao can think about is whether Jeonghan can feel his heartbeat right now. It’s too fast, Minghao thinks, or maybe it’s too slow, or maybe it’s not beating at all. He can’t tell. He doesn’t know what’s worse.

It doesn’t make any sense. He’s sure Jeonghan has been this close before—aren’t they just inches apart in class?—but this time, he’s taking up all the air around them and leaving Minghao’s lungs to burn in want. It would be so easy to blame it on Soonyoung and Junhui, but Minghao knows himself too well to let things be that easy. As he scrolls through the reversed order of photographs, he realizes he’d be alright if Jeonghan never moved from right here. Well, maybe not never. But if he didn’t move for a while, that might be fine. It’s a scary thing to think. Minghao wishes he wouldn’t hope so badly that Jeonghan won’t move for a while.

“Hey, wait.” Before he’s close to ready, Jeonghan’s hand is on his at the button, barely touching. His fingers hover right on top of Minghao’s, and for a few seconds, Minghao feels so much electricity surging through him he expects the streetlight to short out. “Go back to that last one.”

“Ah, sure.”

Minghao hadn’t noticed, but they’ve gone pretty far back in his camera roll by now. The picture in question is one he took in the spring, right after the flowerbeds were refilled, and some of the small green sprouts still poke out of the soil in light curls. Minghao remembers taking several shots on the same day, and in this one in particular, the blooms are a pink that verges on purple, a slow melt toward the edges of the petals. When he took it, he hadn’t thought it was anything special, but looking at it now, he feels something moving behind his ribs.

“I like this one,” Jeonghan says, quiet. His hand stays where it is overtop Minghao’s, breath ghosting on the air in front of them and brushing both their knuckles. “Where did you take it?”

“By the humanities building,” Minghao tells him. “The flowerbeds.” He can hardly hear his own voice. “In the spring.”

“It’s really nice.” They stand there then, silent and still, hands connected but not as the moon creeps its way higher behind the clouds above them. For a moment, Minghao thinks he can feel the earth turning in the soles of his feet. Then Jeonghan sighs, and he realizes he can hear cars passing by on the street again, feel the wind crawling over his neck. Jeonghan lifts his chin and his hand at the same time, and it’s colder than Minghao expects. “Photography sure is cool,” he sighs. “Must be nice.”

“I mean,” Minghao says, clearing his throat, “you could do it, too. All you have to do is get a camera and take pictures.” It’s not quite that simple, but Jeonghan is the type to be deterred by extra effort, so Minghao thinks he should at least make it sound that simple. Jeonghan leans to the side and cracks an oblong smile.

“I guess,” he says, “but I don’t really have the passion for it anyway, you know? I wouldn’t even know what to take pictures of.” He blows out a breath and shuffles toward his motorcycle, holds his leg against it when he gets there. Where he’s standing, the light overhead casts him in indigo shadow. “Plus, good cameras are expensive.”

Minghao hums a bit. “You said you wanted to do philosophy, though, right?” he asks, measured, slipping his camera back into the case hanging around his neck and tilting his head. From this angle, he feels like he’s seeing more of Jeonghan and less of him at the same time. The webbed darkness is obscuring too much, blocking out half of his face and all of his expression. “You could still do that. It’s free to think.”

Jeonghan’s silhouette doesn’t move right away. It sits in wait, shrouded in darkness, outsung by unstirring wind. There’s a breath in, like he’s going to speak, then he leans forward into the pale fluorescent light again and smiles. “I’m surprised you remember I said that.”

“Well,” Minghao says, “it’s not every day I meet someone who’s a complete loser.” He says it because he can’t think of a reason for remembering that he’s comfortable with. Jeonghan laughs.

“I know you actually think I’m pretty cool.” Same leather jacket as usual already pulled on around him, he unpacks his helmet from the rear pouch and balances it on the seat while he tugs on a pair of gloves Minghao hasn’t seen him wear before. They’re dark, and under the light, there’s just the faintest hint of maroon in the stitches. “Anyway, I guess it doesn’t cost anything to think about stuff, but I just think I would need someone to tell me what I should be thinking about. Know what I mean?” He wiggles his fingers once they’re all snug in his gloves and looks Minghao in the eyes. “Like, there’s so much to think about that I don’t even know where to start because I don’t know how much there is. So I can’t even think about anything.”

Minghao blinks silently at him. “That’s kind of philosophical, I think,” he muses. “If you think about it.”

“You think?” _Think_ doesn’t sound much like a word anymore.

“Sure.”

With a nod, Jeonghan turns his key in the ignition and dons his helmet. He lingers for just a bit before climbing onto the seat, then sits a while without moving. The lights on the bike’s underside cast pink shadows, throw faint replicas of the flowers by the wheel on the asphalt in shifting rows, and more than he wishes he could take a picture, Minghao wishes he could just look at it forever. The flowers in those shadows are so far beyond the shapes that make them up.

Jeonghan sits quietly, fingers tapping at his bike’s handles, but he makes no move to drive off. “Well,” he says at last, “thanks.”

Minghao blinks at him. “For what?”

Jeonghan blinks back. Minghao can’t see his mouth, but he can imagine the way it looks behind the helmet, lips just slightly parted and jaw slack, like he knows he has to say something but forgot what it was supposed to be just before the words tumbled out. “For showing me the pictures,” he answers after a while, low and muffled. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you.”

Instead of turning right away to leave, Minghao watches as Jeonghan brings his motorcycle all the way to life and backs up slowly. Even though Jeonghan knows he’s already looking, even though their eyes are still meeting each other in the middle, he gives the engine one solid rev before rumbling slowly out of the parking lot. The small pool of pink light is all Minghao can really make out once he’s on the street, and once it disappears down the road, he turns to leave.

The lot he’s parked in today is on the other side of campus, and as he walks there, he looks up at the sky. It’s blanketed from corner to corner in thick clouds, heavy and purple and threatening rain. After a minute or two, he starts to feel small droplets landing on his face, no more than hints of real raindrops, but he keeps looking up at the sky. Something about the purple of it is so familiar, rouses a warmth over his skin he’s sure he’s felt before, and the longer he gazes up, the more he thinks he can see something in the clouds. Some face, some body, drawn by the glow of the moon hidden behind them. Just as he recognizes the form, a single fat raindrop hits him in the middle of the forehead, and he sighs. Of course. He’s thinking about him again.

 

As the final few weeks of the semester draw near, Minghao finds himself stumbling into Jeonghan a lot more, and whenever he does, he finds himself sticking around to walk with him until he’s gotten on his bike and zoomed out of sight. There’s some sort of strange comfort in seeing that motorcycle that Minghao doesn’t exactly understand, some loneliness in the sight of it parked in a row of empty spots that makes him feel he’s being squeezed deeper into himself from every angle. There’s also a burning sensation Minghao gets right along his ribs every time he watches Jeonghan speed off into the distance, a haunting finality underlain by pink.

“Don’t you ever get scared?” he asks one night as they walk, just after the tiny outline of Jeonghan’s bike has appeared on the horizon before them. They met up at the library earlier by accident; Minghao was passing through on his way from a meeting with a project group from a different class, and Jeonghan spotted him from the back of the Starbucks line and flagged him down. Currently, they’re heading in the opposite direction of Minghao’s car. It seems like they always are.

“Scared?” Jeonghan asks. “What do you mean?”

“Afraid,” Minghao says. “You know. Of crashing. Since you’re not in a car and all.”

Jeonghan draws out a hum and stuffs his hands deep in his pockets. “I mean, probably not more scared than you are whenever you’re driving, right?” Lately, he wears that leather jacket all the time, and when his elbow bumps against Minghao’s, it’s ice cold. “Like, I have a helmet on, which is safer than a car, in a way.” He grins and flicks his gaze to Minghao. “And aside from that, I just try not to think about it.”

“Wow.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“You know what.”

“I don’t know shit.”

Jeonghan laughs then, quiet but echoing, and keeps looking forward. “Well, whatever. I guess it seems scary if you’ve never done it, but there’s something about it that’s really nice.” He takes another glance in Minghao’s direction. “I think you would like it, actually.”

“What makes you think so?” Minghao asks. By now, they’re almost at the parking lot. The moon sits high in a sky clear of clouds, casting a feathery halo on the sidewalk around them.

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan admits. “I just have a feeling.” He purses his lips. “But, you know, you’d have to get licensed and stuff, too, so it’s not like I can prove anything. I do think you would like it, though.”

They’re practically there now, shoe soles skidding on the worn asphalt. The closer they get, the slower they always seem to walk, and even though Minghao knows they’re doing it, he can’t stop himself from dragging his feet every time. Jeonghan fishes the key from his pocket and swings it around in tiny circles on his index finger.

“Do you ever take people with you?” Minghao asks without thinking. Jeonghan is slow in looking back at him, seems like he takes in the whole scene surrounding them before his eyes find Minghao’s.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you ever take people…” He gestures to the bike while he trails off, draws a sort of figure in the air that implies two bodies, and Jeonghan’s smile brightens.

“Oh. You mean, like, passengers.” This is normally where he would retrieve his helmet from its small compartment, but he just stands and smiles, one hand playing at his chin. “I have, but only a couple times.” Minghao is only seconds away from asking _who_ before he freezes up. What’s the point in asking? What kind of answer could he possibly be wanting to hear? “Just my mom and my little sister, around the neighborhood,” Jeonghan explains.

“I didn’t ask,” Minghao says, though his chest loses a bit of its tension.

“I know,” Jeonghan tells him, smiling. He rests one hand on the seat. “So, are you trying to say you want to try it?”

“Huh?”

“I’m a pretty safe driver,” Jeonghan assures him. “If you want to know what it’s like, we could just go somewhere that’s not too far, and you can see if you like it.” Now he turns to the compartment and opens it, pulls out that shiny helmet and rests it on the seat so he can tug his fingers through their gloves. Minghao is only able to stare in wordless surprise while he does it.

“Right now?” he manages to sputter, and Jeonghan laughs once, a little too loud.

“Of course not. You don’t have a helmet.” Still working at his gloves, he looks sideways at Minghao. “Firstly, that’s dangerous, and secondly, it’s illegal.”

“Oh.”

“We can get you one some other time, though. If you want.”

“You don’t just have a spare?”

“Do our heads look like they’re the same size to you?” The way he asks is good-natured, rattled over a laugh, but it doesn’t make Minghao feel less stupid. “We can go halfsies on one, if you want, since you might hate it anyway.”

Minghao presses his lips together in thought. As much as he’s looked at this bike, he’s never actually thought about being on it. The seat doesn’t seem quite big enough for two, and no matter how he looks at it, the odds of winding up with his limbs mangled among twists of metal are so disenchantingly high. Jeonghan smiles at him still, warm and patient, but Minghao can’t fish out an answer even when he tries to open his mouth. His lips only part and stick right back together, magnets pulled into a taut line.

“Well, I’m obviously not gonna try to force you,” Jeonghan breathes a little later, after the silence has started burning the insides of Minghao’s ears. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine. But let me know if you change your mind.”

“I want to,” Minghao’s mouth decides for him suddenly. He takes a second to process the distant sound of his own voice, then takes a step forward. It’s too close. He goes right back.

“Really?” Jeonghan asks, smile glittering.

“Sure,” Minghao says, working his way gradually to feeling like he means it. “Since you’re offering.”

“You won’t regret it!” Jeonghan promises firmly, giving a thumbs up, then tacks on a much meeker, “Hopefully.” He lifts his helmet into his hands and passes it back and forth a few times, left to right and over again, a pointless volley in the dark. “Let me know whenever you’re free, and we can go look for a helmet.”

 

Looking for a helmet, as it turns out, is a far more in-depth process than Minghao figured, or maybe it’s just that Jeonghan is making it that way. They go to a store on the next Saturday, some specialty shop Jeonghan makes Minghao give him a ride to, and they spend over an hour looking at different helmets without coming anywhere close to picking one. Minghao is sure they hadn’t even spent this much time looking at apartments before he signed the lease with Soonyoung and Junhui.

“If you get in a wreck,” Jeonghan says after another unintentional sigh, “you’d rather have a broken leg than a broken head.” He taps his temple gently. “We need to be really particular about the helmet.” Minghao doesn’t know what to say, so he just sighs again. Jeonghan laughs at him.

The helmet they decide on eventually is pretty pricey even in spite of being assuaged by their agreement to split it. Jeonghan tells Minghao to hang onto it until he’s got the time to go for a little ride, and then it’s just Minghao and his helmet the rest of the way home in the car. Looking at it strapped into the passenger seat, Minghao gets the feeling that he’s committed to a lot more than just riding passenger on a motorcycle once. It’s stupid. The weight of it in his hands is so unnecessarily heavy, so terrifying, so senseless. It’s like he’s already signed his name at the bottom of a contract he never even thought to read.

He eyes it in the corner of his room as he does work at his desk the following Monday. There’s not a lot of space left in his closet, and he doesn’t really know where else to put it, so it sits on the floor by his hamper, awkward and out of place. It’s a deep slate gray with a red-orange design traced around the edges, and while he doesn’t mind the colors, he can’t help but think about how badly it’ll clash with Jeonghan’s when they’re next to each other.

Next to each other. He guesses they will be. Right next to each other. How close? Thinking about it to begin with makes his palms a little clammy, and he wants to die. Nothing to be nervous about, he tells himself. Just Jeonghan. Jeonghan is something to be nervous about, his brain tries to say, even though he knows it isn’t true. The sound of his phone buzzing arrows him right between the eyes.

**FROM: Jeonghan**

**U free thurs afternoon?**

Looking at his phone screen makes his head ache. There’s no such thing as worse timing.

 

**TO: Jeonghan**

**Yeah**

**FROM: Jeonghan**

**Good! Bring ur helmet :-)**

So he brings it.

 

Going to meet Jeonghan on Thursday fills him with a bizarre sense of unease that he can tell isn’t just over the thought of riding a motorcycle but can’t pin to anything else. Since he’s finished with classes by late morning, he goes back to the apartment before catching the complex shuttle back to school with his helmet in tow. Just walking around with it feels weird—it’s too large and rigid to fit in any bag he owns, and even carrying it feels awkward, like it’s something he shouldn’t have and everyone he passes can tell he shouldn’t have it with one glance. He knows it doesn’t look right in his hands, but he wishes that didn’t fill his shoes with so much lead.

They meet at the earth sciences building. Jeonghan’s bike is parked in the same spot as the first time Minghao saw it, or maybe one to the right or one to the left; Minghao’s head gets  a little fuzzier with every step he takes. Jeonghan himself is standing beside it patiently, messing with something on his phone while he waits. He’s facing directly to the side, so it’s not until Minghao’s gotten significantly close that Jeonghan spots him in his periphery. When he does, he slips his phone into the pocket of his jeans and warms into an easy smile, hands tucking into the pockets of his jacket instead.

“Afternoon,” he calls. His voice sounds so crystalline in the chilly air of early afternoon, a standalone color beneath the dull gray swath of clouds spread wide above them. It rattles weak in Minghao’s ankles. “Are you ready?”

“I guess.” Minghao drags his feet to a halt about a yard shy of where Jeonghan stands, right at the edge of the asphalt, and Jeonghan takes another few steps forward against the distance.

Now again, he’s pretty. Even in the drab shade of off-white the sky is draping around his shoulders, he looks so incomprehensibly nice, unfairly captivating. Minghao is torn between that unending compulsion to look straight at him and the knot in his stomach begging him to look anywhere else. Somewhere in the middle, he looks at Jeonghan’s face but tries instead to focus on the scene behind him. A certain motorcycle is the most glaring landmark. Breathing out, Jeonghan takes one hand and clamps it on Minghao’s shoulder, leaves it there until Minghao brings himself to let their eyes meet.

“Are you nervous?” he asks softly.

“About what?”

“About the economy.” Jeonghan’s grin wavers strangely, changing shade but not color. “You know about what.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“You seem nervous.”

“No, I don’t,” Minghao scoffs. “How would you know what I’m like when I’m nervous, anyway?” He has to blink in the wake of Jeonghan’s smile.

“A guy has ways of knowing things.” Jeonghan leans his weight backward, like he’ll be able to reroute gravity and pull them back toward the motorcycle. “You’re way easier to read than I think you think you are.” A breath sticks halfway down in Minghao’s throat, but he swallows around it.

“Seems like you’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, huh?”

“So you noticed.” A short minute of silence stretches between them before Jeonghan cuts it with grinning scissors. “Alright, let’s do this. Come on.” He walks backward to the bike, eyes on Minghao all the time, and there’s no option but to follow.

“Okay,” Jeonghan begins, stretching one palm out and flattening it to the seat, then moving to hold the bike steady by the handlebars. “Obviously, as you can see, there are not enough seats for two people on this, so we’re going to have to share this one. You can get on and make sure it’s comfortable.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah, right now.” They blink at each other while Minghao hesitates. “What is it? I thought you said you weren’t scared.”

“I said I wasn’t nervous.”

“So you are scared?” Jeonghan asks.

“No.”

“Get on, then.”

“Is it going to fall over?”

“Why would I tell you to get on if it was going to fall over?”

Minghao hums for a moment and squints suspiciously. “For a prank?” Jeonghan rolls his eyes.

“Please trust me a little more than that,” he sighs.

Minghao gingerly approaches to appease him, but he’s not sure how to tackle this once he’s there. Does he just kick his leg over? It seems like he should be a little more careful than if he were just boarding a regular bicycle, seems like the body is a little too large to get centered on so easily. This should be simpler than he’s making it.

“God, you’re cute,” Jeonghan sighs. Minghao chokes a little bit. “It’s not that complicated. Just get on it the way you think you’re supposed to. I’ll hold the helmet if that makes it easier.”

“I’ve got it,” Minghao breathes, but suddenly he’s got all sorts of new worries, and whether or not he takes this thing to the ground is no longer worth considering. Cute. He hates that. By the time he’s settled himself on the seat, he isn’t seeing anything in straight lines anymore.

“Good,” Jeonghan says, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him gently from side to side until he seems the most balanced. Minghao feels the bones in his arm breaking with each light touch, but he is powerless to stop the fractures from spreading. “Great. Comfortable?”

“Sure.”

Jeonghan’s smile persists, but it never stops looking genuine. “Alright, so let’s run through the details. When we’re riding, you’re gonna want to hold onto me around the waist so you don’t fly off the second we take a turn. You can do it with just one arm, and I know it just seems like one of cheap dirtbag tactics from the movies, but I really do think both arms is the best way to go. It feels the safer, and I can tell how you’re doing better.”

“How do I know you’re not just saying that because you’re a cheap dirtbag?” Minghao asks, and Jeonghan chuckles, low but energetic.

“I’m assuming all the time we’ve spent together up ‘til now is what will help you know that.” Above them, a bird flies slowly back and forth, like it’s trying to catch shreds of their conversation. “But it’s not like you have to. If you feel equally safe just using one arm, that’s fine.” He looks at Minghao then with patient eyes, brows raised in silence.

“Okay,” he says, and Jeonghan nods.

“Okay,” Jeonghan echoes. He seems so much more serious now than he does usually, and it’s burning Minghao up from the inside. “So you’ll have to keep your feet on those pegs right there, and it might get a little warm around your ankles, but I promise nothing is wrong. When we stop, don’t put your feet down, and when we turn, don’t lean either way. Just look over my shoulder on the inside of the turn and be still, and it’ll all be good. We won’t be able to talk while we’re in motion because of the wind, so if something is up and you want to me to pull over for a second, just hit me.” Minghao’s eyebrows raise. “Not to do damage. Just hard enough that I get the message.”

“Why does it feel like I’m being debriefed for a spy mission?” Minghao asks. Once again, Jeonghan’s laugh resonates, infinite and full.

“Yeah, alright, maybe.” He blows a piece of hair away from his nose. “But trust me when I say that anyone who doesn’t talk about all this shit before taking you out on a ride doesn’t care about you.” The intensity in his gaze is suffocating, but Minghao can’t find an excuse to glance away. “If you’re ready, you can go on and hop off. I’ll get on, and then you can climb back up behind me.”

“Alright,” Minghao says, releasing a thick breath. He moves carefully to dismount, Jeonghan’s eyes on him the whole time, then watches while Jeonghan dons his own helmet and climbs on so much more smoothly than Minghao managed. Jeonghan keeps eyeing him while he stuffs his head into his helmet. He hates the way it feels around his head, so cramped and stuffy, but he likes the way Jeonghan’s eyes smile at him.

“You get on now,” Jeonghan says softly, double muffled through the barrier of two helmets, “just like you did before. Remember, feet on the pegs.” He shrugs one shoulder and holds the elbow out just a bit. “You can grab my arm if you need to.”

“I bet you want me to grab your arm,” Minghao grumbles, but he still grabs Jeonghan’s arm.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

“If you say so,” he singsongs. “When we get there, I’m going to get off first, and then I’ll help you, okay? Remember to hit me if you want to pull over.”

“Got it.”

“We’re going now, then. It’s going to be loud when I turn the key, so get ready. Don’t forget to hold on.”

“I know it’s loud,” Minghao says, fitting his arms around Jeonghan’s waist. “I’ve heard it before.” He feels Jeonghan’s laughter through his arms this time, and it makes his whole skeleton liquid.

“I know you have.”

When the engine starts, it’s somehow intensely louder than Minghao expects, like it’s coming from inside his own skull, but it also sounds like it’s coming from the other end of an eight-mile tunnel, distant and removed, so everywhere it’s nowhere. Jeonghan’s abdomen under his arms is warm, and Minghao wonders how tightly he should be holding on, how close to Jeonghan’s back he should be keeping his chest. His brain is spinning so madly he barely even registers their transition into movement, without any customary engine revs to precede it. Instinctively, he tightens his arms around Jeonghan, and he feels him take a breath. Everything about it is so horrifyingly new.

They make a few practice loops around the parking lot before pulling to the entrance and waiting for an opportunity to leave. Jeonghan turns his head to the side and looks at Minghao as best he can. “Are you ready?” he asks. It’s kind of late to ask now, and Minghao can’t get a word out, so he just nods and tightens his arms a little more. Eyes still smiling, Jeonghan faces back forward and eases them onto the road.

Minghao can’t decide whether he likes it or hates it. Of course not, when they haven’t been on the road for more than a few minutes, but it’s frustrating. He doesn’t like the nerves that come with it, whether they’re because of being on a motorcycle or other reasons, doesn’t like the way the wind is loud as crashing waves all around his ears. It drives him nuts to feel so helpless, to be so totally unable to control where he’s going or how fast he gets there. He’s stuck on a track, turning whenever his body is told, with nowhere to go but forward and beyond. There aren’t even any moons to pick up on the way.

On the other hand, there’s something nice about being whisked along and not having to think. He watches the roads change through they gray-black eye guard of the helmet, and he thinks it’s nice to be pulled along sometimes instead of to be the one pulling, and it’s not often he gets the chance to look at the scenery like this. All above them, the sky is gray, but at its farthest edge, a ribbon of blue peeks out. Looking at that blue, he suddenly realizes how strange this all is, how close he is to Jeonghan, how muddled his head has gotten in the past few months. That strip of blue clears everything up.

Minghao can’t think of anyone else he’d do this with. Even if everyone he knew were licensed, had been riding motorcycles since birth, he can’t comprehend it. He would never trust Junhui enough to climb on back and wrap his arms around him, wouldn’t even dream of it with Soonyoung. Everyone else he hasn’t known long enough to consider it. Yet he’s known Jeonghan less time than all of them, and he’s okay right now. If there’s one person he’s willing to trust with his life like this, Jeonghan is it.

There isn’t a good reason to trust him, either. Not that he isn’t a perfectly decent person, but all Minghao’s other friends are also perfectly decent. Maybe it’s just that Minghao wants to be able to trust him more. Maybe it’s that he looks like he deserves to be trusted. Maybe it’s that Minghao already understands perfectly, but he’s just as bad at coming to terms with his own feelings as ever. When they come to a red light, Jeonghan squeezes Minghao’s knee and throws a glance over his shoulder to see how he’s doing. With a weighted sigh, Minghao gives him a weak thumbs up and shuts his eyes.

He likes him. He really does. Maybe it’s been since Jeonghan bought him that drink the second time they studied together, or maybe it was even before that. Maybe it was ever since he thought Jeonghan’s face was memorable, the first time he saw him, when he asked Minghao about Moon Collector. He thought then that this was a face that makes you fall in love if you aren’t careful, and from the moment he took Jeonghan’s hand, he was never being careful enough. Now he’s being the opposite of careful. Reckless. It wasn’t just the face that pulled him in this deep.

They take a turn when the light turns green, and Minghao makes sure to remember that thing about the inside shoulder, but he’s just made it so much harder for himself to focus. There are few times more inconvenient than this, after all, to realize something you already knew, and Minghao’s always been so bad at timing. He wants off now, he thinks, but his chest tells him he doesn’t. If he really wanted off, all he would have to do is move his arm, and he’d be free. If he really hates this that much, all he needs to do is let go. His arms are locked tight in their cage around Jeonghan’s waist, and he knows he won’t be moving them for a while. It’s hopeless, this whole thing.

After a while, Minghao starts to notice roads he’s only vaguely familiar with, and it dawns on him through a veil of foggy thought that he doesn’t know where they’re headed in the first place. Jeonghan never mentioned it, and now they’re surrounded by too much wind for Minghao to ask. Not that there’s much of a point, he guesses, when they’ve already made it this far. He watches the scenery to their side pass by more and more slowly, rows of leafless trees coming into gradual focus, brick buildings regain the deepness of their reds. A few more turns, and they pull into the parking lot of an apartment complex.

“I’m getting off first,” Jeonghan reminds him when they stop. Though they’re no longer moving, Minghao’s entire body still buzzes with the chill of the wind, feels like his skin is separating from the rest of him. He watches in a daze as Jeonghan dismounts then extends a hand to help Minghao do the same. Barely registering the feeling in his own nerves, he reaches out and takes that gloved hand, steps on shaky legs to the concrete.

“So?” Jeonghan asks, taking his helmet off and running fingers through his hair until it looks normal. It occurs to Minghao that he should do the same, but his arms feel so empty all of a sudden, and reaching up to grab his helmet feels like swimming breast stroke through quicksand.

“So?” Minghao repeats. Having his helmet off now makes everything seem too loud, too bright, and the way Jeonghan smiles expectantly is overpowering. Only seconds now before he crumples to the ground.

“So how was it?” he asks, nudging Minghao’s arm. “Did you have fun?”

“It was… I don’t know.” He usually likes to be more eloquent than this, but he has a lot going on right now. “I guess, yeah.”

Jeonghan frowns. “Did you hate it?” he mutters. “We could have stopped.”

“I didn’t hate it,” Minghao says. “I don’t know if it was fun, but it wasn’t bad.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Jeonghan says, brightening, then glances toward the building. “Well, let’s go inside. It’s cold.”

“Where are we, anyway?” Minghao asks, following behind with his helmet clutched tight in his hands. “Shouldn’t you have mentioned that first?”

“Did I not?” Jeonghan wonders aloud. “My apartment.” They plod on a few more steps without saying anything, just two sets of off-beat footsteps drumming on the pavement. “Don’t you recognize it? You just picked me up here, like, not even a week ago.”

“I mean… I guess.” Minghao huffs when he hears Jeonghan chuckle at him. So maybe he’s not great at remembering places. Maybe he wasn’t really paying that much attention to the locale.

Jeonghan leads them into one of the units and up two flights of stairs, then fumbles with the key for so long Minghao has a chance to remember how much emotional spaghetti he’s got twisting around inside him now and realize Jeonghan’s apartment is the last place he needs to be. He doesn’t know whether it would be better or worse if Jeonghan’s roommates are home, but it’s not like he gets to choose which he’d rather have anyway. When Jeonghan finally pushes the door open and holds it for Minghao to go inside, the room is starkly quiet, so if there is somebody home, the chances don’t seem high that Minghao will be meeting them.

“I thought it would be fair,” Jeonghan begins, “since I’ve been to your place, but you haven’t been to mine. Now we’re super even.” He gestures one arm at the couch. “You can sit down, if you want. Do you want a drink?”

“What do you have?”

“Pepsi and 2% milk,” Jeonghan says proudly. “And water from the tap.”

“I think I’m good.”

“Suit yourself, then.”

Sitting on the couch, Minghao takes a look around. It’s not a particularly special place, not much different from his own, but something about the air is heavy with something he can’t even think of how to place. The cushions beneath him are comfortable in the exact wrong ways, the carpet just ruffled enough to suggest it’s been vacuumed within the past few days but not today, the ceiling blank of any dark water stains that might make it special. He remembers the way Jeonghan’s back leaned against his leg as he sat on his own couch so many weeks ago, and though only the two of them are here now, it doesn’t feel like nearly enough space. Try as he might, Minghao can’t find any air to breathe.

Jeonghan sets down two glasses on the coffee table, one full of Pepsi and one full of water, then plops next to Minghao, right on the brink of being too close. “In case you change your mind,” he explains, grabbing his cup of Pepsi and taking a careful sip from it.

“Thanks, but I do not trust the tap water here.”

“Wow.”

“I mean in town,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Not at your apartment specifically.”

“Ah.”

A thin silence floods around them, soaks into Minghao through the skin. Maybe this was a bad idea. Usually, he knows what to say, but he can’t think of anything right now, and Jeonghan is just sitting next to him like he doesn’t even mind. It’s almost just like class, but this time there’s no barrier separating them and no professor to give them some distraction from the stifling awkwardness. He’s desperate for a conversation, even if it’s something as simple as the weather, but his lips won’t do anything.

“I should have thought about this,” Jeonghan sighs suddenly, shoulder creeping sideways into the danger zone. Minghao can feel the heat coming from it. “There’s not really that much to do here. I just thought it would be fun if you came over.”

“Huh.”

“Very helpful.”

“Sorry, am I supposed to be helping?” Minghao snorts. “It’s not my fault you suck at planning.”

“You could throw me a bone, at least,” Jeonghan says, stretching one arm along the back of the couch. Minghao feels it burning behind his shoulders. “Is there anything you want to do?”

“I don’t know.” His eyes find the TV after a short search around the room. “We could watch TV?”

Jeonghan hesitates. “We don’t have cable.”

“Jesus.”

“Well, actually, wait.” He leans forward to grab at the remote, hand clinging to Minghao’s shoulder where he’s unwilling to separate from the couch. “I think Josh’s Xbox is hooked up to it, and he has Hulu. I think.” When the screen comes to life, he looks around for the console controller, groaning when he sees it’s been stowed neatly in a basket by the television set.

“Won’t he be mad if you use it without asking?” Minghao asks while Jeonghan walks to retrieve it. He falls back to the seat with a grin and starts up the Xbox, flicks the cursor through all the little boxes onscreen until he’s found the right one.

“Of course not,” he says, smug. “Josh never gets mad at me.” While the app loads, he glances at Minghao. “Besides, he said I could use it.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. So what do you want to watch?”

“I don’t care.”

Jeonghan groans. “This is ridiculous.”

“Hey, I suggested watching TV,” Minghao snaps. A smile dances at his lips until he takes a look to the side and sees Jeonghan’s eyes on him. His throat feels like it’s lined with glue.

“I guess,” Jeonghan hums. He turns his attention back to the screen and flips down a few rows of show icons absently. “Ah, wait,” he mumbles, dialing the cursor back a few. “Have you seen this show?” Minghao squints at the little thumbnail, but it doesn’t seem familiar.

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, seriously? We’re watching it, then.” As soon as he clicks it, a loading circle begins to spin in vacuous whiteness on the screen’s center, then a choppy theme song is bumbling through the speakers. Jeonghan hums the opening bars softly, just a touch flat. “This is my favorite. It’s hilarious.”

“It better be,” Minghao says. He feels Jeonghan’s laugh through the arm he lays across the back of the couch again.

On the whole, Minghao isn’t very impressed with it. Some of the jokes are good enough to get him chuckling, but most of the time he just spends wondering why Jeonghan likes it so much. The highlight is every now and then, when Jeonghan will quote an entire scene of dialogue with complete faithfulness, even improvising door slams by hitting his own leg. Halfway through the second episode, a character in the background says something he’s heard Jeonghan mutter during class at least six times, and he feels like everything is starting to make sense. Despite the thick cloud cover outside, he sees enough light being shed to blind him.

They watch five episodes, and the longer Minghao watches Jeonghan act a parallel sequence from his seat on the couch, the more he warms up to it. The jokes even get a little better. Still, it’s something he could only see himself watching if he had someone there with him. When he hears the credits theme roll around again, he starts to wonder how many times Jeonghan has watched this to know it so well, catches himself just before he wonders whether he’s watched it with anyone else, shown it to anyone else. The room feels so dangerously small again.

“We don’t have to keep watching,” Jeonghan tells him before pressing play on the next episode. “I can tell you’re not that into it.”

“I mean, it’s fine.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Jeonghan scoffs. “What do you wanna watch? Like, _Naruto_ , or something?”

“Are you assuming I like anime just because I live with two of the anime club officers?”

“I’m sorry, why do you sound so offended?” He proceeds to browse the anime section with a small smirk. “Was I wrong? Would you rather watch _Dragon Ball Z_? _One Piece_?”

“I’d rather be dead.” Jeonghan snorts.

“It’s not that bad.”

“You try living with them, then.” He accidentally leans back against the couch more, and he regrets the feeling of Jeonghan’s arm on his back, but it would be too suspicious to move again immediately, so he stays still. “When you watch Soonyoung Naruto run around the living room to get in his steps for the day, then we can talk.”

“Actually, that reminds me of this video, where like—have you seen it? There’s like…” He starts to gesture with his free hand, but gives up halfway to reach in his pocket for his phone. “I’ll just show you. You probably haven’t seen it.” He holds the phone between them and keys in the password like he doesn’t care if Minghao sees it, then lets out a small noise of surprise when what greets him isn’t the home screen.

Of course Minghao recognizes it. How could he not? It’s the game over screen of Moon Collector, proudly displaying the 38 moons Jeonghan was able to collect before dying and failing to surpass his high score of 106. Minghao’s throat closes up, and he thinks he might cry. And for what? It’s not important. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a stupid game he doesn’t even like. But his chest aches all the same.

“I guess I left the game open,” he muses absently. “I totally forgot.”

“I didn’t think your top score would be that high,” Minghao makes himself say, almost a whisper in hoarseness.

“Right?” Jeonghan beams. “But I’ve gotten so much better. Every time I see the little app icon, I remember how high your score is, and I try to beat it.” Then he huffs. “Well, I haven’t yet, but you’ll see. I thought I could do it while I was waiting on you today, but you were earlier than I thought.”

Minghao’s mind stops thinking, but his body acts all on its own. He turns in slow motion, slides one hand to the no man’s land between Jeonghan’s shoulder and neck, just past the collar of his shirt, fingertips pressing the warm skin there. He leans in close, closer, and there was no air in the room to begin with, but now there is even less. I’m going to kiss him, Minghao thinks, and their lips are only a breath apart. Only a breath apart, and he looks into Jeonghan’s eyes and doesn’t know what he sees. And he doesn’t know what he’s doing. The flesh beneath his hand turns to acid, and his stomach flips inside him. Head rushing with blood, he jumps to his feet.

“I just remembered—I’ll be right back.” And then he stumbles out the door as fast as his legs will carry him. Behind him, beside the unmoving Jeonghan, he hears the sound of a glass teetering in a vain attempt to stay upright before it falls. He hopes it was the water.

“I was about to kiss him,” Minghao whispers as he races down the stairs, heart slamming around like a pinball among his ribs. “I was going to kiss him. I almost kissed him.” He keeps repeating it until he’s reached the ground, but he doesn’t get any closer to understanding himself. “What the fuck was I thinking?” he half yells, walking as fast as his legs will carry him until he’s out of the parking lot and off down the sidewalk.

He hopes being outside will clear his head, but it doesn’t. The sky has darkened so much, and the clouds have gone with it, now a muddy gray smudged around the edges with charcoal. All the air is thick and oppressive with the rain that’s sure to fall soon, and Minghao wades through it thoughtlessly forward, until he arrives at the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. He pulls his phone out and falls to a squat beside the door, ignoring the hard stare of a woman who exits beside him.

“Hello?” Junhui picks up on the third ring. Hopefully that doesn’t mean he’s busy.

“Hey, can you come pick me up? I’ll send you my location.”

“Sure, champ. What’s going on?” His voice warms, and Minghao can make out the shifting sound of him standing up. “Escaping from a kidnapper? Or did you go for a run and get lost?”

“Something like that.”

“Like which one?”

“Both.” He listens to Junhui’s confused breathing for a second.

“Alright, you weirdo,” he says, grin fading out of his tone and vague concern fading in. “I’ll come get you.”

“Thanks.”

Thirteen minutes later, Minghao sees Junhui’s headlights turn into the lot, and he’s running to hop in the passenger seat before Junhui has even had a chance to spot him. Junhui likes to ask questions at times like this, and Minghao knows he won’t be safe from them, but he doesn’t ask any before they pull back onto the road, and Minghao uses the opportunity to take a breath. Even when he tries, he can’t find enough air to fill his lungs.

“So,” Junhui starts gently as they slow down into a yellow light, “where are we exactly?”

Minghao eyes the street signs through his window and tries to make his voice sound normal. Now that he’s in the clear, he feels the most like crying. “Corner of Broadleaf and Miller,” he manages. He feels Junhui’s eyes on him.

“And why are we here?” Minghao doesn’t have enough energy to make something up, so he just shrugs. Junhui blows out a breath. “This has something to do with Jeonghan,” he states rather than asks, and Minghao hates the way it makes him feel all crooked inside.

“Maybe.”

“So are you admitting you’re in love with him yet?” Minghao doesn’t say anything. Junhui’s stereo doesn’t work, so the car is silent save for the sound of motion coming from the wheels. One fat raindrop hits the windshield with a deafening smack. “Listen, you need to talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Minghao mutters, throat sore. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You’re not helping yourself by keeping everything bottled up.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m trying to help you, you know.”

“I don’t need help.” Junhui groans and puts on the brakes a little harder than he needs to.

“You’re so frustrating,” he says. “Nothing’s ever going to go your way if you won’t even own up to your own feelings.”

“Alright, dad, can you stop lecturing me?” Minghao spits, shoving his face further into the window. “I was at Jeonghan’s apartment with him, and I decided I wanted to leave. Are you happy?” He feels the shine in his eyes, but he forces it down. A few more drops pelt the window in the stretch of silence before Junhui responds.

“You’re leaving out something important,” he ventures.

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

Slowly, the frequency of raindrops picks up, until there’s a steady stream coming down and washing over the windows. Junhui flicks the windshield wiper on, a medium tempo that sets Minghao’s nerves trembling. “Fine,” he says. Minghao watches raindrops race each other down the window and to their inevitable doom, watches more dive from that ugly black sky to join the fray. Even as it intensifies, the sound of the rain never quite gets loud enough. “Then don’t talk.”

 

Minghao isn’t someone who skips class often, but he skips it the next day. He initially plans on only skipping economics, but when he wakes up, his eyes are red and puffy, and he figures it’s safer just to skip them all. The free time doesn’t make him feel any better. All he does is lie in bed all day and try not to think about how much his stomach hurts. Around the time econ starts, it hurts even worse. He chances a look at the corner of the room and realizes he left his helmet at Jeonghan’s, buries his face in his pillow, sighs. Better he’s the one to keep it anyway.

It’s lucky the semester is almost over. There are only a few classes left, and if Minghao is careful about it, he can get away with not sitting by Jeonghan. And then the semester will be over, and he won’t have to deal with seeing him anymore, maybe ever. And then Jeonghan will graduate. And he’ll really be gone. Distantly, Minghao feels a dampness on his cheeks, and he wants to know when he’s going to be over this.

A loud knock from far outside his room announces a visitor and shocks Minghao upright in the same breath. He knows Junhui is home, and he waits for the sound of his footsteps in the hall before relaxing again. Against his will, he strains to hear the opening of the door, just barely able to make out the sound of Junhui’s voice over the distance and through the walls.

“Yeah,” he hears Junhui say, “he’s here.” It’s definitely about Minghao. It has to be. “No, come in. Yeah, that room.”

The sound of footsteps outside grows ever quieter with Junhui’s retreat back to his own room, and Minghao waits to hear anything else with his breath held. Nothing. Nothing. Just when he thinks he’s somehow wound up safe, a knock resounds from his own door. He flops back to the mattress in limp defeat.

“Who is it?” he calls weakly. Like he doesn’t already know. There’s a measured beat of silence.

“Santa Claus,” Jeonghan’s voice says from the other side, timid and soft. He waits a moment before asking, “Can I come in?”

There’s nothing else to lose now, Minghao figures. He’s already come all the way here. “Sure.”

The door opens, and Minghao watches Jeonghan’s silhouette stumble in surprise when he realizes the lights are off and curtains drawn. Something is in his hands—a helmet, it looks like—and he stands for a second just holding it before shutting the door behind him and venturing further. Minghao’s eyes are used to the dark already, and he can make out Jeonghan’s outline as it moves warily forth, step after unsteady step. A few feet from where Minghao’s head rests on the pillow, he stops and sinks to sit on the floor.

“You forgot your helmet at my place,” he explains, quiet.

“I just noticed,” Minghao croaks. Faintly, he can discern Jeonghan’s features, and it’s tying knots in his throat all over again. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Another leaden silence drapes itself over them, blocking out all the oxygen. Minghao’s instincts are telling him to run, but he has nowhere to go now. In any case, he doesn’t feel much like moving. He breathes as quietly as he can.

“Does it freak you out that I came here?” Jeonghan asks after a while. Minghao closes his eyes and takes some time to chew on it.

“I mean, you’ve been here before,” he says, “so I guess not.” In the quiet after the echo of his voice dies out, he can see Jeonghan nodding. “Why didn’t you go to class?”

“I did go,” Jeonghan says, “but you weren’t there—someone else was sitting in your seat—so I left.”

“Oh.”

“Why didn’t you go?” He waits, but Minghao’s mouth is too dry to come up with a decent answer. “Are you sick?”

“No.” God, would it be easier to be sick. He should have just lied. Jeonghan goes for too long without saying anything, and Minghao starts to wonder if the human-shaped shadow he’s seeing is just a trick of the darkness.

“So you won’t tell me?” he asks. He doesn’t sound hurt, but he doesn’t sound like nothing, either. There’s something underlaying every word that makes Minghao feel absolutely rotten.

“There’s no reason,” Minghao fibs. “I just didn’t want to go.” He knows Jeonghan doesn’t buy that, and he knows he shouldn’t, but it’s all his brain can think to say. Jeonghan’s shadow before him shifts.

“Why did you leave yesterday?”

Minghao knew this was coming. He knew he would ask, yet he still couldn’t come up with anything to say. His tongue sits like a rock in his mouth, heavy with an explanation he doesn’t have the guts to give. Jeonghan is waiting, but he can’t say anything. His mind is so despairingly empty. Somehow or other, he thinks he’ll die before he ever speaks again, and maybe that’s the easiest way. Junhui’s voice flashes hot on his ears. Nothing’s ever going to go his way, huh?

“What are you trying to tell me here?” Jeonghan asks, voice tense. “I don’t get it. I’m trying to understand, but you’re not helping at all. If you don’t like being around me, just say so, and I’ll back off.”

“That’s not it,” Minghao groans. Jeonghan moves closer, imperceptibly. He feels a shift in the air pressure.

“What is it, then?” he presses, softer. “If you didn’t like the ride, all you had to do was say it. I’m an adult, you know. I can take it.”

“That’s not it,” Minghao repeats.

“What, then? Was it the show? God, just tell me! How am I supposed to know what not to do if you won’t even tell me what I did wrong?”

Minghao lets all the air in his chest out in one huff, smashes his face into the pillow and turns just enough to free his mouth. “Why do you think you did something wrong?” he whines. His head is starting to hurt; he’ll blame it on the shortage of air.

“I’m sorry,” Jeonghan scoffs, “what else am I supposed to think when you just get up and leave out of nowhere?” He waits a second. “If I didn’t do anything, why are you being so weird? Just tell me what happened!”

“I don’t want to talk about this!”

“I don’t care! I want you to talk about it!” Frustration and fatigue mix together in his voice, volume creeping higher each time he speaks. “How is it fair that you know exactly what’s going on and I don’t get to know anything?”

“You really just… have no awareness, huh?” Minghao says, weak. “I almost kissed you.” Jeonghan is silent. Minghao is too scared to try and look at him. The skin on his cheeks is going to burn off if he’s not careful, and he’s really not being careful now.

“You what?” Jeonghan croaks. “When?”

“Yesterday.” He listens for the sound of cogs turning inside Jeonghan’s head. “Right before I left.” The cogs keep up their toil.

“That’s what that was?”

“What else?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe… I don’t know.” It’s too quiet. Between them is too much space and not enough, infinity and nothing, and the whole world is waiting around them with held breath for something more. “Why didn’t you?”

“Excuse me?” Minghao scoffs, sitting up. He can’t see Jeonghan’s face, but he can picture it. There’s not a smile, but he imagines the hints of one. “As if I could.”

“But you were going to.”

“Because I wasn’t thinking.”

“Well, think about it now.”

Minghao opens his mouth to respond before he realizes he doesn’t know what to say. His jaw hangs slack for a moment, rusting in position. Just barely, he can make out the twinkle dancing in Jeonghan’s eyes. “What the hell are you saying?” he sputters. Every last bone in his body is gelatin, and he clutches at his own knees to make sure he’s still here.

“I’m saying if you wanted to kiss me you should’ve done it.” Jeonghan scoots closer again. Not by much, but by enough. “So did you want to or not?”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

“Yes, you do. You totally do.” Jeonghan exhales a good-natured sigh. “You just don’t want to understand.”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you want to kiss me, or didn’t you?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“I want you to talk about it.”

“Why?”

“Is that even a question?” Jeonghan scoffs. “Isn’t it obvious?” His hand touches down on the edge of the mattress, the lightest possible force. “Don’t act like you don’t get it.”

“Are you trying to ruin my life,” Minghao asks slowly, “or are you just stupid?”

Jeonghan chokes on his next breath. “And just what do you mean by that?”

“I like you, you know!” he bursts, exasperated. “As in a crush? As in I have feelings for you? Is there something you don’t follow here?”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to follow here,” Jeonghan insists, emphatic.

“If you know, then what the fuck are you trying to do?”

“And you say I have no awareness,” Jeonghan sighs. “Have I been too subtle the past couple months? Was it somehow too vague of me just now when I told you to kiss me?”

“I don’t like this implication that I’m stupid.”

“Not stupid,” Jeonghan amends, “just difficult.”

“Thanks, that’s way better.”

“So are you getting the message or not?”

Minghao reaches for Jeonghan’s shoulders instead of answering, steels himself, makes his best guess at where Jeonghan’s mouth is, and steels himself again. Then he breathes. Then he kisses him. For the first second or two, he’s not quite on target, but he finds his way there gradually. Jeonghan’s lips are so frighteningly soft Minghao almost can’t tell they’re there at all, and the taste on them is so complex. He tastes like purple clouds or impending rainfall or fluorescent moonlight, like the sound of an engine revving. Like strawberry. Minghao hates how little he understands. Jeonghan’s warm palm on his neck drags him back to earth.

“That’s more like it,” Jeonghan mutters softly, breath ghosting over Minghao’s lips. Minghao hums. He knows his face is red, and even if Jeonghan can feel its warmth, he’s glad for the dark.

“So… you like me.”

“Are we not past this?” Jeonghan huffs. “Yes.”

“Since when?” He hears Jeonghan inhale like he’s about to answer, then hesitate for a moment. “The first day of class?” Minghao guesses.

“Not the first day,” Jeonghan tells him. “Maybe the third.”

“Wow.”

“Don’t give me that,” he says, hitting the back of Minghao’s neck. Not even close to doing damage. “You fell in love with me the moment you laid eyes on me, right? I know I’ve got that kind of face.” Minghao can tell he’s joking, but it’s unsettling how near he’s hitting to the mark.

“Who knows,” Minghao breathes. “I only came to terms with it yesterday.”

“And you tried to kiss me that same day?” Jeonghan whistles. He tries to whistle, at least, but it’s just a hollow sort of whooshing sound. “You move fast.”

“I don’t wanna hear it.”

After another wordless beat drums by, Jeonghan fades into a hushed sort of laughter, a light chuckle that echoes empty around the walls. The way he laughs is funny, so unusually textbook, and Minghao fights his own laughter for a minute before letting himself melt into it as well. It’s kind of funny, in a way, that they’re both here. Funny in the same way it’s funny that Jihoon called Junhui his boyfriend for the first time just two weeks ago, and Junhui wasn’t even around to hear it.

“Man,” Jeonghan says, breath out heavy. “I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t think you would make it so impossible.”

“You knew what would be hard?”

“Kissing you.” His thumbs taps at the spot under Minghao’s ear where it sits. “I guess I owe Junhui.”

“What for?”

“Letting me in,” Jeonghan explains, “even though he looked like he didn’t want to.”

“But he still did it, that bastard.” Minghao sighs. “But he did pick me up yesterday, I guess.”

“You should be nicer to him.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Another second passes by, and Minghao wonders if he should kiss Jeonghan again. The thought that he could is maddening with the possibilities that arise, and when he decides to do it, he feels the wind whipping around all sides of his face, the buzz of life under his arms, the heat of an engine warming the backs of his ankles. Scenery passes by like wildfire under his eyelids.

“Ah,” Jeonghan says, distancing himself, “one other thing.”

“Huh?”

“Next time,” he says, “if you want to convince someone you’re really going to come back, you should at least turn around to see what you spilled on their floor.” Minghao’s chest shrinks around his heart, and he feels Jeonghan’s smile where he can hardly make it out.

“Which one was it?” he asks, voice small.

“Guess,” Jeonghan whispers.

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to.”

Minghao hesitates. “Water?” Jeonghan’s smile grows even more enigmatic.

“Guess you’ll have to come see whether there’s a stain in the carpet for yourself.”

“Guess so.”

Jeonghan is quiet for a moment before asking, “You liked it, right? Riding, I mean. Like, you didn’t hate it?”

“I liked it,” Minghao assures.

“Good. Because I liked you being there.” A short semblance of a laugh tumbles through his teeth. “It’s fun, right? It feels free.”

Minghao guesses that’s right. It probably feels freer when you’re the one doing the actual driving, but it feels free enough as a passenger, too, in the scariest way. It feels free in the way baby birds must feel free the very first time they try to fly out of the nest, convinced they’ll hit the ground until the moment they don’t, helpless but somehow not quite. Free in an abstract, unquantifiable way maybe only someone who would have been a philosopher in another life might choose to think about. Minghao kisses him again.

Later, when Jeonghan leaves, he turns on the lights for the first time all day. The harsh glare of the bulbs cuts into his eyes too much, blurs the shapes into nothing, and when he parts the curtains to soften it, he looks at the sky. There are no clouds in it, but the sun has sunken low, and all across its highest reaches dance scattered shades of purple. Though they vary in shade, a few patches here and there are always the same hue that Minghao feels flowering along his ribs. He loves the consistency.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! i hope you enjoyed!!! postings are anonymous for now, but i'm sure you can tell who wrote this, right? i think it's obvious enough. not that i openly spilled the details, but i just think content-wise, this particular fic is something only i would write. it's fine if you don't know, but, you know. you probably should. i want to thank my lovely soulfriend for coming in clutch right at the end of the writing process to help me whip this together, and i'd like to thank everyone who read for reading! JEONGHAO IS GOOD and i hope this fic can help you see it. enjoy the rest of the fics in the bigbang collection as well- everyone has worked so hard!!!


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